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” CCWRO Welfare News-2022-01 Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations, Inc. 1111 Howe Ave Suite 635 Sacramento CA 95825-8551 Telephone (916) 736-0616 Fax (916) 736-2645 CCWRO is an IOLTA funded support center serving IOLTA legal services programs in California. Types of Services Offered: Litigation, Co-Counseling, Fair Hearing, Representation, Consultation, Informational Services, Research Services, In-Depth Consultation and Welfare Training. Programs Covered: CalWORKs, Welfare to Work (WtW), Food Stamps, Medi-Cal, IHSS, CAPI, Child Care, General Assistance & Refugee\/Immigrant Eligibility. All Rights Reserved. (cont’d on page 2) CalSAWS Updates CalSAWS neglects GA\/GR data: At a February 2022 CalSAWS board meeting, the CalSAS JP Meet- ing Slide Deck 2\/18\/22 Final-updated slide #13 showed the number of active Medi-Cal, CalFresh and CalWORKs cases in CalSAWS as of 2\/6\/22. How- ever, the slide did not provide any data regarding over 100,000 General Assis- tance\/General relief cases that are also in CalSAWS. Why? CalSAWS has capacity to make changes requested by the coun- ties – but lacks capacity for new changes implemented by the Legislature. At the February 18, 2022 JPA CalSAWS board meeting presentation of CalSAWS JPA Meeting Slide Deck Final-updated # 30 states that future legislation intended to immedi- ately improve public social services for beneficiaries won’t be implemented until 2024. Social services beneficiaries could see severe impacts from this fail- ure to prioritize future policy and enact the the leg- islative changes to imrpove the lives of California’s needy. Contemporaneous to this statement of priorities of migration and existing policy commitment from CalSAWS, the following hours were reported as al- located. According to CalSAWS the work represented by these hours does not appear related to CalSAWS migration but implements requests by counties that are not migration related: 400 hours No Migration according the CalSAWS document CA-214754. Create a new endpoint to retrieve the reception logs for a specified case or of- fice, date, and status. 365 hours – No Migration according the CalSAWS document CA 232018. CalSAWS change control board documents admit. 1001 hours – No Migration according the CalSAWS document CA224771. GA\/GR fiscal changes for Los Angeles County. 2,573 hours – No Migration according the Cal- SAWS document CA 233488. The GA\/GR solution in the CalSAWS system is designed to automate the rules for the Los Angeles county’s implementation as well as the automation and monitoring of their GROW program. Currently, CalWIN manages their General 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 MigratiobnnHours – 4,150 Non-Migrat ikon Hours – 38, 724 Thousands CalSAWS publicly claims that \”Our top priorities are migration and existing piolicy committmemnts. We anticipate having space for new poilicy chages beginning in mid-2024.\” Really? 11% migration and 89% not migration. CCWRO Welfare News March 2022 2022-01 (cont’d from page 1) 2 Assistance GR program logic by using a Rule Matrix which can be accessed by the county to allow each county adminis- trator to customize the behavior to their specific county. 1,135 hours – No Migration according the CalSAWS document CA 214916 . Update the CalSAWS System Task Management functionality to allow authorized users to define and schedule a periodic sampling of Tasks. The periodic Task sample results will be accessible for review. 5,066 hours – No Migration according the CalSAWS document CA 234211. Update the CalSAWS System Task Management functionality to allow authorized users to define and schedule a periodic sampling of Tasks. The periodic Task sample results will be accessible for review. 5,146 hours No Migration according the CalSAWS docu- ment CA 233488 & CA 233489. The GA\/GR solution in the CalSAWS system is designed to automate the rules for the Los Angeles county’s implementation as well as the automa- tion and monitoring of their GROW program. Currently, CalWIN manages their General Assistance GR program logic by using a Rule Matrix which can be accessed by the county to allow each county administrator to customize the behavior to their specific county. 786 hours In a closed CalSAWS CalWORKs\/CalFresh committee meeting with county leadership, the committee approved work that would automatically impose CalFresh sanctions on currently sanctioned CalWORKs beneficiaries. This is a total of 16,472 hours just from January 20, 2022 CalSAWS Change Control Board Approvals. They do not represent the total number of hours approved that are not migration related. These numbers caught our attention, but, there are more. During this meeting, the Change Control Board acted on 84 change requests, only 11 were related to migration. The Control Board approved 38,724 hours and only 4,150 were for migration. This represents 11% for migration. See table below: System Change Request Hours Migration? CA-214754 400 No CA-214756 292 No CA-228869 12 No CA-233089 22 No CA-236661 9 No CA-236662 15 No CA-229301 240 Yes CA-229302 240 Yes CA-232018 365 No CA-235360 133 No CA-235989 20 No CA-236077 134 No CA-236079 190 No CA-236357 22 No CA-236793 124 No CA-236882 80 No CA-236926 40 No CA-237721 61 No CA-237821 86 No CA-237845 24 No CA-237997 22 No CA-238141 25 No CA-238169 61 No CA-238187 20 Yes CA-238312 10 No CA-238387 5 No CA-238523 2 Yes CA-224771 1001 No CA-225255 355 No CA-230192 201 No CA-233487 702 No CA-233488 2573 No CA-233489 2573 No CA-235297 220 No CA-236010 169 No CA-236997 274 No CA-237932 67 No CA-237357 0 CA-47290 429 No CA-214918 426 No CCWRO Welfare News March 2022 2022-01 3 CA-214919 335 No CA-224269 1126 Yes CA-231970 684 No CA-232069 133 No CA-233027 229 No CA-235060 20 No CA-235353 10 No CA-235422 205 No CA-236300 10 No CA-236371 63 No CA-236451 370 Yes CA-236766 123 No CA-237360 0 No CA-237606 7 Yes CA-238011 10 Yes CA-238325 280 No CA-210330 158 No CA-211362 204 No CA-234997 169 No CA-235292 52 No CA-214269 104 No CA-221703 115 No CA-233919 23 No CA-229461 1131 Yes CA-232562 110 No CA-236204 274 No CA-236577 324 No CA-237144 376 No CA-49395 154 No CA-203793 590 No CA-214912 256 Yes CA-214916 1135 No CA-225639 1045 No CA-229096 1066 No CA-235285 348 No CA-217717 74 No CA-232065 719 No CA-202818 114 No CA-216757 748 Yes CA-221357 257 No CA-226844 7700 No CA-231511 273 No CA-234211 5066 No CA-207127 890 No CalWORKs Earned Income Disregards Punish Low Wage Working Families The 2022 CalWORKs earned income disregards are set too low. Most families working full-time and earning minimum wage who apply for CalWORKs have their applications denied for earning too much. CalWORKs recipients who start working full-time earn- ing minimum wage are generally terminated from CalWORKs for excess income. The majority of CalWORKs families are families of 2 and 3 persons. Today, if a mom with 2 or 3 kids works full- time and gets minimum wage, they are ineligible for CalWORKs. History of Earned Income Disregards in California – In 1970s, when CalWORKs (then AFDC) single beneficiaries worked, they were entitled to an earned income disregard of $30, then anoth- er third of the remainder. The actual costs of childcare and trans- portation were deducted from the net income. The remainder was known as countable income. The countable income was deducted from the Minimum Basic Standard of Adequate Care (MBSAC) to calculate the payment amount. For two-parent families, work- ing over 100 hours a month made the family ineligible for AFDC. In the 1972 case, Jefferson v. Hackney, 406 U.S. 535 (1972), the Supreme Court allowed states to deduct the countable income from the maximum aid payment rather than the MBSAC, up- holding the only part of the Reagan 1971 Welfare Reform Act. President Reagan proposed limiting earned income disregard 1\/3 deduction from the gross income to 4 months and the $30 deduc- tion to 12 months. Within a year, however, California’s Gover- nor Deukmejian received a federal waiver to remove the 4 month and 12-month limitations on AFDC earned income disregards. In 1998, the CalWORKs program was created, implementing the 1996 Clinton Welfare Deform Act, where the earned disre- gard formula was changed to gross earned income minus $225 earned income disregard and 50% of the remainder deduction. In 2020, Jessica Bartholow of Western Center on Law & Poverty se- cured a provision in SB 80 (Chapter 27, Statutes of 2019) that increased the earned income disregard (EID) to $500 for 2020 and $550 for 2021. CCWRO RECOMMENDATIONS: a) Increase the earned income disregard from $550 to $1,000 a month and make sure it is adjusted for inflation either every year or every three (3) years; b) Use the recipient earned income deduc- tion method to determine eligibility for CalWORKs ap- plicants that would not only benefit the working poor, but it would also simplify the program for county workers. ”

” CCWRO Welfare News-2022-02 Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations, Inc. 1111 Howe Ave Suite 635 Sacramento CA 95825-8551 Telephone (916) 736-0616 Fax (916) 736-2645 CCWRO is an IOLTA funded support center serving IOLTA legal servic- es programs in California. Types of Services Offered: Litigation, Co-Counseling, Fair Hearing, Representation, Consultation, Informational Services, Research Services, In-Depth Consultation and Welfare Training. Programs Covered: CalWORKs, Welfare to Work (WtW), Food Stamps, Medi-Cal, IHSS, CAPI, Child In Brief On January 5, 2022, CDSS submitted a Timely Household Reporting of Food Loss Waiver request to the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) for the following 20 counties: Alameda, Amador, Calav- eras, El Dorado, Humboldt , Lake, Los Angeles, Marin, Monterey, Napa. Nevada, Orange, Placer, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Sierra and Yuba. Food Nutrition Services (FNS) approved the Timely Reporting Waiver for these 20 counties. The Timely Reporting Waiver will allow households in these counties to make a request for replacement of Cal- Fresh benefits through January 25, 2022. The waiver will allow the state to provide impacted households in the affected counties additional time to report their food loss. More information go to CalFresh Disaster Report. On January 3, 2022, CDSS informed counties that certain COVID-19 waivers need state reports to FNS after the COVID-19 waiver ends. One such waiver eliminated the interview requirement at ini- tial application and recertification, provided that the applicant’s identity was verified and all other man- datory verifications at 7 CFR 273.2(f)(1) completed. The counties were required to contact the household if any information on the application was question- able and\/or could not be verified. CDSS instructed counties to complete the waiver evaluation survey to ensure complete and accurate reporting to FNS. The county responses were due January 24, 2022. The results of the survey have not yet been made public. These waivers were a surprise to many CalFresh applicants who had no idea that their interviews should have been waived when their identities were verified. Many applicants had their applications de- nied for not completing the unnecessary interview. Los Angeles County DPSS News LADPSS CAN HELP MORE HOMELESS FAMILIES – Los Angeles County DPSS informed the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors that 21,911 families received State Tem- porary Homeless Assistance (THA) for 16 days. LADPSS also has a Temporary Homeless Assistance Program +14 (THA+14) that gives thehomeless another 14 days of County THA funded with state and federal CalWORKs money. Only 2,168 families received THA+14 benefits. The Los Angeles County THA+14 is funded with County Single Allocation for CalWORKs benefi- ciaries that can be used for homeless assistance. That means that 19,743 families were not referred to THAP+14 and once again homeless on the 17th day. Los Angeles County DPSS also informed the County Board of Supervisors staff that the CalWORKs County homeless pro- grams cannot help any family if the head of the household is an excluded parent i.e., timed out, an SSI parent or whose immi- gration status makes the individual ineligible for CalWORKs. Yet, the income earned by the excluded parent(s) is counted as income against the CalWORKs grant of their children. Most of these families live in the deepest of deep poverty and they are all eligible for county homeless programs because they are CalWORKs assistance units, but Los Angeles has decided to exclude them from the county homeless programs. LADPSS TERMINATES GR IN VIOLATION OF BOARD POLICY – The Los Angeles County Board of Su- pervisors resolved that during the emergency pandemic, General Relief (GR) beneficiaries will not be terminated from GR for failure to complete the annual agreement. LADPSS found a way to get around the Board’s resolution by requiring GR beneficia- ries to submit a SSP-14 form every year, which is not required by state regulation 46-337.43 except for beneficiaries who have lost an SSI hearing. LADPSS has used this unnecessary require- ment to terminate GR benefits for about 4,000 GR beneficiaries a month since the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors ordered LADPSS not to terminate GR benefits for failure to complete their annual agreement. LADPSS VICTIM OF THE WEEK. Ms. L0012CD8 received a Notice of Action, dated 3-31-22 stating that all of her benefits would be stopped on 4-1-22. The law says, folks are supposed to get a 10-day advance notice. Does that apply to folks in Los Angeles County? CCWRO Welfare News March 2022 2022-02 2 Gavin Newsom’s CARE Courts- Hope with Caution by Andrew Chen On March 3, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a new plan to fight homelessness the creation of CARE courts , a state-wide program to compel per- sons with severe mental illness or addiction into treatment through court-mandated programs and case management. As the LA Times reported, while the program is primar- ily intentioned to help the most service-intensive persons experiencing homeless, often labeled the chronically homeless , a participant would not need to be diverted into CARE court someone re-entering the community after incarceration or exiting an involuntary psychiatric hold (often referred to as a Fifty One Fifty or 5150 ) could be placed into such a program, and persons currently under criminal prosecution could also be referred. The reaction to the program from mayors and other state actors thus far has been almost uniformly positive local officials are clearly receptive to strong state action to as- sist counties with difficult case management. As Governor Newsom said, [t]his is about accountability, but it is about compassion; and it’s about recognizing the human condi- tion. While setting up a renewably funded avenue in a re- silient institution (the courts) to provide more services to the chronically homeless is a laudable goal, and the program appears to still be in the planning stages, Governor Newsom and the Legislature must take extreme care crafting this program to not make the same systemic mistakes that have led to the crisis happening today. Sanctions for Non-Compliance Must Prioritize Empathy and Forgiveness By embedding expanded access to services within the power of the courts, the CARE Court plan empowers judges with extraordinary power to mandate health care for highly at-risk individuals. However, it also empowers judges to sanction highly vulnerable people for failing to complete these programs. As we’ve seen in Veterans Court or Drug Court programs, which the CARE Court model re- sembles, people who fail to comply with the court’s require- ments can find themselves subject to harsh punishment, including reincarceration, fine, or other sanction. Severe punishment for noncompliance, contrary to popu- lar logic, at best has no effect or even worse increases the likelihood someone will recidivate or otherwise fall out of the system. As such, the CARE courts should aim to al- most never punish, whether through incarcera- tion, fine, or warrant, an individual who fails their initial CARE Plan. Rather, it should seek to critically reevaluate its Plan, suggest alter- native measures, and work with the subject of the Plan to determine what of its aspects are not working. In addition, CARE Plans should be prepared to work with individuals over the course of years, plural, not a six- or twelve-month at- tempt. Even for persons who have significant means to afford the best treatment money can buy, mitigating the effects of severe mental ill- ness or addiction can take years. For many of the patients the CARE Courts will be seeking to help, they will be fighting against decades of neglect and trauma unwinding that dam- age is a long-term commitment, not a task the courts should expect to solve quickly. A public defender friend I spoke to about this plan raised an additional concern that specif- ically for individuals being diverted to CARE plans from criminal court, the existence of the diversion would create a perverse incentive for prosecutors to charge more aggressively and with more serious offenses, because the off-ramp of the diversion exists. This is a difficult problem to work around, as prosecu- torial discretion is normally broad and uncon- strained moreover, as the charging decision happens before the individual’s CARE diver- sion, rules added to any CARE Court legisla- tion are unlikely to be able to affect charging decisions. Adding forgiveness and empathy to CARE programs is the best way to ensure this program does not become an excuse for prosecutors to further entrench our systems of mass incarceration. Above all, CARE Plans should prioritize empathy, charity, and forgiveness. I firmly believe that the best way to address the deep, medically complicated issues that afflict many chronically homeless persons is not through force or tough love , but by building a com- munity around these persons and creating a sense of responsibility in both the neighbors who care for them, and a sense of belonging for the beneficiary of these services. (Cont’d on page 3) CCWRO Welfare News March 2022 2022-02 3 Mandated Services Must be High-Quality and Af- fordable While the coercive power of the courts can be used to mandate that local governments provide long- neglected services, the quality and accessibility of those services is just as, if not more critical. Governor Newsom has pledged billions of dollars to create the necessary infrastructure to implement this program effectively. That’s a great start, but there are other pol- icy tools that the Governor and the Legislature should implement in order to ensure that all Californians sub- ject to a CARE Plan have equal access to comparably high-quality services. First, the program should be rooted in the most up-to- date medical and scientific consensus about best prac- tices for treating severe mental health and addiction. To that end, the program should require that the De- partment of Public Health (DPH) and the Department of Social Services (DSS) establish objective, strict medical criteria for the minimum care of CARE Court patients. These criteria should be made available to the public, and should be revised openly and regu- larly, with concrete input from both the medical and advocate community. Furthermore, counties should be required to adhere to these minimum standards. In addition to types of medical interventions, these standards should include explicit staffing ratios. Cur- rently, social workers in county DSS offices across the state are overburdened with cases, often juggling dozens of clients simultaneously, leaving no time to devote to any particular case. The success of the CARE Courts will depend on whether they can build a truly caring community around our state’s most vulnerable residents. A critical component of this is making sure program participants feel heard and respected not just a cog in a giant, impersonal system. To address staffing shortages in both urban counties with high levels of homelessness as well as rural counties with fewer re- sources, the program should provide financial incen- tives for medical professionals and social workers to staff these programs. Finally, CARE Court services should be free-of-cost to patients. When I ran a legal clinic for homeless youth in Los Angeles, I saw first-hand how many court-mandated programs were inaccessible to the poor because of their financial cost. Not only were participants physically unable to fulfill their require- ments, but the experience left many of my clients feeling shamed and excluded for their poverty. Again, the most important aspect of this initiative will be its ability to create genuine communities of care. Paywalling access to these programs is a sure- fire way to needless failure. One often overlooked aspect of these costs is transportation. Many of the persons who would qualify for a CARE plan do not have the money for a personal vehicle or public transportation. As part of onboarding, CARE Courts should provide participants with un- limited Metro cards, bus passes, or equivalents to help them make court appearances and see their doctors and social workers. California Must Move Beyond the Idea of Poverty as Personal (Ir-)Responsibilty Overall, I’m encouraged by the attention and resources the Governor has devoted to homelessness during his term, and especially the scale and boldness of the CARE Court program However, I wish these services were being provided to persons with severe mental health or addiction disease without the coer- cion of a court order. Creating court cases for these vulnerable individuals inherently implies that the government needs to instill in partici- pants a sense of responsibility for fixing their own problems. This notion is itself rooted in an antiquated idea of poverty as the result of poor individual choices a trope abused by right-wing politicos to gut social service pro- grams, absolve the privileged of their respon- sibility to their community, and shame and demonize the poor. We know better today. We understand that poverty is a problem of resources and policy priorities of classism, racism, and other bias of the increasing isolation and break- down of neighborhoods in the modern world, and our willingness to create communities of care where even the most vulnerable and downtrodden of our neighbors are loved. The CARE Courts are a positive first step towards achieving those goals. But this state, so trail- blazing in many ways, should go further in setting an example for the nation by show- ing that the key to ending poverty isn’t sham- ing the poor into personal responsibility , but rather making a societal commitment through government to loving, uplifting, and caring for the least fortunate among us. – Andrew Chen, CCWRO Staff Attorney, Homeless Prevention Project. ”

” CCWRO Welfare News-2022-02 Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations, Inc. 1111 Howe Ave Suite 635 Sacramento CA 95825-8551 Telephone (916) 736-0616 Fax (916) 736-2645 CCWRO is an IOLTA funded support center serving IOLTA legal servic- es programs in California. Types of Services Offered: Litigation, Co-Counseling, Fair Hearing, Representation, Consultation, Informational Services, Research Services, In-Depth Consultation and Welfare Training. Programs Covered: CalWORKs, Welfare to Work (WtW), Food Stamps, Medi-Cal, IHSS, CAPI, Child In Brief On January 5, 2022, CDSS submitted a Timely Household Reporting of Food Loss Waiver request to the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) for the following 20 counties: Alameda, Amador, Calav- eras, El Dorado, Humboldt , Lake, Los Angeles, Marin, Monterey, Napa. Nevada, Orange, Placer, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Sierra and Yuba. Food Nutrition Services (FNS) approved the Timely Reporting Waiver for these 20 counties. The Timely Reporting Waiver will allow households in these counties to make a request for replacement of Cal- Fresh benefits through January 25, 2022. The waiver will allow the state to provide impacted households in the affected counties additional time to report their food loss. More information go to CalFresh Disaster Report. On January 3, 2022, CDSS informed counties that certain COVID-19 waivers need state reports to FNS after the COVID-19 waiver ends. One such waiver eliminated the interview requirement at ini- tial application and recertification, provided that the applicant’s identity was verified and all other man- datory verifications at 7 CFR 273.2(f)(1) completed. The counties were required to contact the household if any information on the application was question- able and\/or could not be verified. CDSS instructed counties to complete the waiver evaluation survey to ensure complete and accurate reporting to FNS. The county responses were due January 24, 2022. The results of the survey have not yet been made public. These waivers were a surprise to many CalFresh applicants who had no idea that their interviews should have been waived when their identities were verified. Many applicants had their applications de- nied for not completing the unnecessary interview. Los Angeles County DPSS News LADPSS CAN HELP MORE HOMELESS FAMILIES – Los Angeles County DPSS informed the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors that 21,911 families received State Tem- porary Homeless Assistance (THA) for 16 days. LADPSS also has a Temporary Homeless Assistance Program +14 (THA+14) that gives thehomeless another 14 days of County THA funded with state and federal CalWORKs money. Only 2,168 families received THA+14 benefits. The Los Angeles County THA+14 is funded with County Single Allocation for CalWORKs benefi- ciaries that can be used for homeless assistance. That means that 19,743 families were not referred to THAP+14 and once again homeless on the 17th day. Los Angeles County DPSS also informed the County Board of Supervisors staff that the CalWORKs County homeless pro- grams cannot help any family if the head of the household is an excluded parent i.e., timed out, an SSI parent or whose immi- gration status makes the individual ineligible for CalWORKs. Yet, the income earned by the excluded parent(s) is counted as income against the CalWORKs grant of their children. Most of these families live in the deepest of deep poverty and they are all eligible for county homeless programs because they are CalWORKs assistance units, but Los Angeles has decided to exclude them from the county homeless programs. LADPSS TERMINATES GR IN VIOLATION OF BOARD POLICY – The Los Angeles County Board of Su- pervisors resolved that during the emergency pandemic, General Relief (GR) beneficiaries will not be terminated from GR for failure to complete the annual agreement. LADPSS found a way to get around the Board’s resolution by requiring GR beneficia- ries to submit a SSP-14 form every year, which is not required by state regulation 46-337.43 except for beneficiaries who have lost an SSI hearing. LADPSS has used this unnecessary require- ment to terminate GR benefits for about 4,000 GR beneficiaries a month since the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors ordered LADPSS not to terminate GR benefits for failure to complete their annual agreement. LADPSS VICTIM OF THE WEEK. Ms. L012CD8 received a Notice of Action, dated 3-31-22 stating that all of her benefits would be stopped on 4-1-22. The law says, folks are supposed to get a 10-day advance notice. Does that apply to folks in Los Angeles County? CCWRO Welfare News March 2022 2022-02 2 Gavin Newsom’s CARE Courts- Hope with Caution by Andrew Chen On March 3, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a new plan to fight homelessness the creation of CARE courts , a state-wide program to compel per- sons with severe mental illness or addiction into treatment through court-mandated programs and case management. As the LA Times reported, while the program is primar- ily intentioned to help the most service-intensive persons experiencing homeless, often labeled the chronically homeless , a participant would not need to be diverted into CARE court someone re-entering the community after incarceration or exiting an involuntary psychiatric hold (often referred to as a Fifty One Fifty or 5150 ) could be placed into such a program, and persons currently under criminal prosecution could also be referred. The reaction to the program from mayors and other state actors thus far has been almost uniformly positive local officials are clearly receptive to strong state action to as- sist counties with difficult case management. As Governor Newsom said, [t]his is about accountability, but it is about compassion; and it’s about recognizing the human condi- tion. While setting up a renewably funded avenue in a re- silient institution (the courts) to provide more services to the chronically homeless is a laudable goal, and the program appears to still be in the planning stages, Governor Newsom and the Legislature must take extreme care crafting this program to not make the same systemic mistakes that have led to the crisis happening today. Sanctions for Non-Compliance Must Prioritize Empathy and Forgiveness By embedding expanded access to services within the power of the courts, the CARE Court plan empowers judges with extraordinary power to mandate health care for highly at-risk individuals. However, it also empowers judges to sanction highly vulnerable people for failing to complete these programs. As we’ve seen in Veterans Court or Drug Court programs, which the CARE Court model re- sembles, people who fail to comply with the court’s require- ments can find themselves subject to harsh punishment, including reincarceration, fine, or other sanction. Severe punishment for noncompliance, contrary to popu- lar logic, at best has no effect or even worse increases the likelihood someone will recidivate or otherwise fall out of the system. As such, the CARE courts should aim to al- most never punish, whether through incarcera- tion, fine, or warrant, an individual who fails their initial CARE Plan. Rather, it should seek to critically reevaluate its Plan, suggest alter- native measures, and work with the subject of the Plan to determine what of its aspects are not working. In addition, CARE Plans should be prepared to work with individuals over the course of years, plural, not a six- or twelve-month at- tempt. Even for persons who have significant means to afford the best treatment money can buy, mitigating the effects of severe mental ill- ness or addiction can take years. For many of the patients the CARE Courts will be seeking to help, they will be fighting against decades of neglect and trauma unwinding that dam- age is a long-term commitment, not a task the courts should expect to solve quickly. A public defender friend I spoke to about this plan raised an additional concern that specif- ically for individuals being diverted to CARE plans from criminal court, the existence of the diversion would create a perverse incentive for prosecutors to charge more aggressively and with more serious offenses, because the off-ramp of the diversion exists. This is a difficult problem to work around, as prosecu- torial discretion is normally broad and uncon- strained moreover, as the charging decision happens before the individual’s CARE diver- sion, rules added to any CARE Court legisla- tion are unlikely to be able to affect charging decisions. Adding forgiveness and empathy to CARE programs is the best way to ensure this program does not become an excuse for prosecutors to further entrench our systems of mass incarceration. Above all, CARE Plans should prioritize empathy, charity, and forgiveness. I firmly believe that the best way to address the deep, medically complicated issues that afflict many chronically homeless persons is not through force or tough love , but by building a com- munity around these persons and creating a sense of responsibility in both the neighbors who care for them, and a sense of belonging for the beneficiary of these services. (Cont’d on page 3) CCWRO Welfare News March 2022 2022-02 3 Mandated Services Must be High-Quality and Af- fordable While the coercive power of the courts can be used to mandate that local governments provide long- neglected services, the quality and accessibility of those services is just as, if not more critical. Governor Newsom has pledged billions of dollars to create the necessary infrastructure to implement this program effectively. That’s a great start, but there are other pol- icy tools that the Governor and the Legislature should implement in order to ensure that all Californians sub- ject to a CARE Plan have equal access to comparably high-quality services. First, the program should be rooted in the most up-to- date medical and scientific consensus about best prac- tices for treating severe mental health and addiction. To that end, the program should require that the De- partment of Public Health (DPH) and the Department of Social Services (DSS) establish objective, strict medical criteria for the minimum care of CARE Court patients. These criteria should be made available to the public, and should be revised openly and regu- larly, with concrete input from both the medical and advocate community. Furthermore, counties should be required to adhere to these minimum standards. In addition to types of medical interventions, these standards should include explicit staffing ratios. Cur- rently, social workers in county DSS offices across the state are overburdened with cases, often juggling dozens of clients simultaneously, leaving no time to devote to any particular case. The success of the CARE Courts will depend on whether they can build a truly caring community around our state’s most vulnerable residents. A critical component of this is making sure program participants feel heard and respected not just a cog in a giant, impersonal system. To address staffing shortages in both urban counties with high levels of homelessness as well as rural counties with fewer re- sources, the program should provide financial incen- tives for medical professionals and social workers to staff these programs. Finally, CARE Court services should be free-of-cost to patients. When I ran a legal clinic for homeless youth in Los Angeles, I saw first-hand how many court-mandated programs were inaccessible to the poor because of their financial cost. Not only were participants physically unable to fulfill their require- ments, but the experience left many of my clients feeling shamed and excluded for their poverty. Again, the most important aspect of this initiative will be its ability to create genuine communities of care. Paywalling access to these programs is a sure- fire way to needless failure. One often overlooked aspect of these costs is transportation. Many of the persons who would qualify for a CARE plan do not have the money for a personal vehicle or public transportation. As part of onboarding, CARE Courts should provide participants with un- limited Metro cards, bus passes, or equivalents to help them make court appearances and see their doctors and social workers. California Must Move Beyond the Idea of Poverty as Personal (Ir-)Responsibilty Overall, I’m encouraged by the attention and resources the Governor has devoted to homelessness during his term, and especially the scale and boldness of the CARE Court program However, I wish these services were being provided to persons with severe mental health or addiction disease without the coer- cion of a court order. Creating court cases for these vulnerable individuals inherently implies that the government needs to instill in partici- pants a sense of responsibility for fixing their own problems. This notion is itself rooted in an antiquated idea of poverty as the result of poor individual choices a trope abused by right-wing politicos to gut social service pro- grams, absolve the privileged of their respon- sibility to their community, and shame and demonize the poor. We know better today. We understand that poverty is a problem of resources and policy priorities of classism, racism, and other bias of the increasing isolation and break- down of neighborhoods in the modern world, and our willingness to create communities of care where even the most vulnerable and downtrodden of our neighbors are loved. The CARE Courts are a positive first step towards achieving those goals. But this state, so trail- blazing in many ways, should go further in setting an example for the nation by show- ing that the key to ending poverty isn’t sham- ing the poor into personal responsibility , but rather making a societal commitment through government to loving, uplifting, and caring for the least fortunate among us. – Andrew Chen, CCWRO Staff Attorney, Homeless Prevention Project. CCWRO Welfare News March 2022 2022-02 4 CCWRO Welfare News March 2022 2022-01 2019-10 News CCWRO Welfare News November 11, 2019 2019-10 13 ”

” CCWRO Welfare News-2022-04 Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations, Inc. 1111 Howe Ave Suite 635 Sacramento CA 95825-8551 Telephone (916) 736-0616 Fax (916) 736-2645 CCWRO is an IOLTA funded support center serving IOLTA legal services programs in California. Types of Services Offered: Litigation, Co-Counseling, Fair Hearing, Representation, Consultation, Informational Services, Research Services, In-Depth Consultation and Welfare Training. Programs Covered: CalWORKs, Welfare to Work (WtW), Food Stamps, Medi-Cal, IHSS, CAPI, Child Care, General Assistance & Refugee\/Immigrant Eligibility. All Rights May 2022 On May 12, 2022, Governor Newsom released his Revised Budget for 2022-2023. The budget reveals, that again over $2 billion CalWORKs dollars will go to the State General Fund and it’s labeled CalWORKs Contribution to the General Fund . The budget also reveals that the average grant for a CalWORKs average fam- ily effective October 1,2022 would be $805 a month, which is equal to 42% of the federal poverty level. Thus, the inequitable deep CalWORKs poverty will continue in 2022-2023. Meanwhile, the average grant for a foster child in 2022-2023 would be $2,812 a month (over 250% of the federal poverty level) and the av- erage grant for an adopted child in 2022-2023 would be $1,315 a month (over 116% of the federal poverty level). The average CalWORKs child receives $314 a month, which is 28% of the federal poverty level. The Budget Underestimates the Cost of EBT Theft Victim Relief – The 2022-2023 budget estimates that the monthly EBT Cal- Fresh, CalWORKs and RCA EBT thefts will be $2 million per month. The 2022-2023 budget only allocated $12 million for a stated $24 million need. Only 9% of the $647 million CalWORKs Homeless money is an entitlement go- ing directly to homeless families. – The 2022-2023 budget includes $647 million for CalWORKs homelessness. Less than 9% is used for the CalWORKs Homeless Assistance Program (HAP), the only Cal- WORKs entitlement program for homeless families of California and 91% is used for the discretionary programs that include a lot of dollars not issued to the CalWORKs homeless fami- lies. The HAP program limits services to once every 12 months. This callous limitation renders many babies, children and families to endure months of homelessness. Ms. Contreras and her two (2) children, Natalia, 11 months and Juan, three years, became homeless in December of 2021. They applied for HAP and received their temporary homeless assistance. She was lucky, before Christmas was able to find a permanent shared housing with the assistance of HAP permanent homless assistance. In March she was evicted from her housing because her shared housing roommate did not pay the rent. She tried to apply for the HAP program, but the county welfare department showed her and the kids the door and said come back in December if you are still homeless. Her phone has been disconnected and it ap- CalWORKs Homeless Assistance Fundig for 2022- 2023 CalWORKs Homeless Assistance entitlement -9% CalWORKs Homeless Assistance non- entitlement – 91% The Newsom 2022-2023 May Revise Budget Good Could be Better 2 (Cont’d on page 3) pears that Ms. Contreras and her two children have joined the thousands of other homeless families with children because of the mean-spirited restric- tions contained in the only California homeless program that is an entitlement. Governor Proposes 11% CalWORKs Grant Increase Current Grant Levels Grant Levels Effective 10-22 Region 1 Non- Exempt Region 2 Non- Exempt Region 1 Non- Exempt More Dollars Region 2 Non- Exempt More Dollars AU Size MAP MAP MAP Eff. 10-22 MAP Eff. 10-22 1 $579 $548 $643 $64 $608 $60 2 733 696 814 $81 773 $77 3 925 878 1,027 $102 975 $97 4 1,116 1,060 1,239 $123 1,177 $117 5 1,308 1,243 1,452 $144 1,380 $137 6 1,499 1,425 1,664 $165 1,582 $157 7 1,691 1,607 1,877 $186 1,784 $177 8 1,883 1,789 2,090 $207 1,986 $197 9 2,074 1,971 2,302 $228 2,188 $217 10 + 2,266 2,152 2,515 $249 2,389 $217 CalSAWS NEWS County CalSAWS BenefitsCal requires an email address to access all features of BenefitsCal. Why not a use a user name? CalSAWS, besides operating in the dark for most part, is also violating federal law by requiring CalFresh applicants to have an email address if they want to use all features of BenefitsCal. Un- like County CalSAWS employees who have email, many CalFresh applicants do not. BenefitsCal could have given public social services applicants a choice to use email or a user name. But the man- agers of BenefitsCal did not consider applicants who do not have an email address or do not want to give out their email address. To assure equity in the food stamp program in May 27, 2011 USDA FNS released a Questions and Answer on Online Applications . This guidance says that folks do not 28% 250% 116% CalWORKs Child Monthly Grant Foster Care Child Monthly Adopted Child Monthly Grant Average Grants for Children in the 2022- 2023 State Budget CCWRO Welfare News May 2022 2022-04 https:\/\/www.fns.usda.gov\/snap\/qas-online-applications 3 CCWRO Welfare News May 2022 2022-04 need an email address to apply. BenefitsCal allows folks to apply without an email address. But there is no ability to use the various features of BenefitsCal, funded with millions of dollars, to help applicants complete their application process. Transition from Your Benefits Now (YBN) to BenefitsCal is a Nightmare for Benefi- ciaries – Los Angeles has over 30% of California cases. Many Los Angeles CalWORKs, CalFresh and Medi-Cal beneficiaries had a YBN on-line account for their public benefits case. Effective May 1, 2022, after several delays, YBN died and now YBN users can use BenefitsCal. In the 21st century one would think that the YBN account could migrate to BenefitsCal without blinking an eye. Well, in order to activate a YBN account in BenefitsCal Los Angeles CalWORKs, CalFresh and Medi-Cal beneficiaries must (1) enter their YBN account information; (2) enter the mobile phone number that YBN has; (3) set security questions just like they did for YBN and (4) verify the email address and phone number at the same time. To verify the new account beneficia- ries must enter numbers texted on the mobile phone and numbers emailed to the beneficiary at the same time. While the creators of this complex system may have smart phones, many beneficiaries do not have the IT gadgets that the BenefitsCal programmers have and many beneficiaries are unable to create an account in this complicated migration system created by apathetic counties. It is well known that CDSS and DHCS, the single state agencies responsible for the administra- tion of the SNAP, TANF and Medicaid programs, have no control over what California counties do. CalSAWS Charges CDSS over 40% more for the same change that CalWIN charges On March 14, 2022, CDSS asked CalSAWS and CalWIN to estimate costs for certain changes in forms; CF 377, CF 377D, CF 377, 4SAR, CF 377.1A, NA 960Y SAR and NA 960X SAR. CalSAWS estimated costs at $138,469 and it would need 9-12 months to do the form updates. CalWIN said it would cost $60,000 and it could be done within 6 months to do the same IT work.. How much money and how many IT hours would CalSAWS need to delete the number 18 (years) and replace with number 19 (years)? $100,000 to $500,000 and it would take from 700 to 3,500 hours. On March 4, 2022, CDSS asked CalSAWS how much it would cost to automate AB 2052 authored by Assemblymem- ber Quirk-Silva. Current law provides that a child who is 18 years of age can continue to receive Cal- WORKs if they can prove that they would complete their high school requirements by the time they become 19. AB 2052 provides that a child who is 19 years of age can continue to receive CalWORKs if they can prove that they would complete their high school requirements by the time they become 20. CalSAWS contends that it would cost from $100,000 to $500,000 and it would take from 700 to 3,500 hours to change age 18 to age 19 . How much and how many IT hours would CalSAWS need to delete all resource tests for CalWORKs and delete the 100-hour rule? $100,000 to $500,000 and it would take from 700 to 3,500 hours. SB 996 would repeal those limitations on assets with regard to eligibility for CalWORKs, thereby eliminating the consideration of an individual’s or family’s assets as a condition of eli- gibility for CalWORKs. The bill would also make con- forming changes to other provisions. This bill would repeal the 100-hour standard described above for purposes of determining a child’s deprivation of parental support or care due to the unemployment of their parent. The bill would also make conforming changes to other provisions. Does changing ages from 18 to 19 , changing doz- ens of asset tests, and the 100-hour rule require the same costs and the same time period? Something smells here. CCWRO Welfare News May 2022 2022-04 4 process quarter up until the present date, if the case is still active? If the case is closed, can the County request income verifications from the time of the process quarter up until the case closed? On 3-22-22 CDSS responded saying: 1) Yes. Per MPP 20-006.543, the CWD shall verify the (IEVS) information by notifying the recipient in writing of the information received and requesting that the recipient respond within 10 days. Additionally, MPP Section 20-006.542 states that verification shall include the amount of the asset or income involved, whether the recipient had access to it, and identification of the period(s) when the individual actually had the asset or income. This means that the CWD must only re- quest information needed to resolve the questionable IEVS information, limited to the period covered on the match re- ceived. 2) No. Per MPP 20-006.54, the CWD must only request information needed to resolve the questionable IEVS informa- tion, limited to the period covered on the match received. This applies to both open and closed cases. However, per guidance outlined in ACL 21-16, If an appropriate third-party payroll source pro- vides information beyond what was reported in an IEVS match showing the client potentially missed a mandatory report (i.e. over IRT), the CWD must attempt to verify the discrepancy by sending a client verification letter in accor- dance with MPP 20-006.543. If the client fails or refuses to respond with sufficient information to clear the discrepancy, the CWD must consider the income reported by the appropriate third- party payroll source as verified and determine its effect on eligibility in accordance with program rules. What are Counties and CDSS working on? Tracking log CDSS told CWDA that they are planning to release a draft ACL and revised CW 61\/61A\/62 that has been in the works for over 10 years. CDSS will review the feed- back from CWDA during February of 2022 and then decide what to do. It is now May 2022. CDSS and CWDA will collectively work and update chapters of state regulations relative to time limits pertaining the AB 79 in February. Counties are wondering if they can transfer a Stage 1 case to Stage 2 without WtW activ- ity? The child care regs give counties extreme flexibility to determine when a case can be transferred from Stage 1 to 2 that is when the county determines that the beneficiary’s par- ticipation is stable. Stable is defined by the county according to state regulations. Under this inequitable rule one worker can deter- mine that the assistance units’ (AU) participa- tion is stable, while another worker in the same county, same unit determine that the same AU is not stable. No wonder the CalWORKs beneficiaries complain about racism and inequity. Can Counties Ask for Income and Asset Veri- fication for IEVS Hits Outside of the IEVS Hit Period? On 9-3-21 San Diego County asked CDSS When a potential discrepancy is identified, the County sends the recipient verification letter to the customer. For IFD abstracts that are identified as being poten- tially discrepant: 1) Is there any guidance in an ACL, ACWDL, ACIN, or any other source that stipulates a limitation to what period of time that income can be requested for, on the recipient verification letter to resolve the discrep- ancies? 2) Can the County request the customer to provide income verifications for the IFD from the time of the ”

” CCWRO Welfare News-2022-05 Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations, Inc. 1111 Howe Ave Suite 635 Sacramento CA 95825-8551 Telephone (916) 736-0616 Fax (916) 736-2645 CCWRO is an IOLTA funded support center serving IOLTA legal services programs in California. Types of Services Offered: Litigation, Co-Counseling, Fair Hearing, Representation, Consultation, Informational Services, Research Services, In-Depth Consultation and Welfare Training. Programs Covered: CalWORKs, Welfare to Work (WtW), Food Stamps, Medi-Cal, IHSS, CAPI, Child Care, General Assistance & Refugee\/Immigrant Eligibility. All Rights Reserved. June 2022 (cont’d on page 2) Inequitable Reporting Requirements for Counties and Beneficiaries It seems that county management staffcan’t under- stand the systemic and logistical issues that cause CalWORKs and CalFresh beneficiaries to struggle with submitting their completed SAR 7 forms. As a result, counties punish beneficiaries unfairly when they fail to submit SAR-7 forms properly. For example: Ms. Smith, who has two children, took a temporary job over the holidays and reported the income on her January annual redetermina- tion. Her employment ended in February. When she received her June SAR-7, she completed and answered no for income in the report month. The county responded by saying her SAR-7 is incomplete in that she failed provide verification of discontinued income. Ms. Smith cannot provide this verification because the business permanently closed in February, but that made no difference to the county welfare department (CWD) verifica- tion must be provided. Meanwhile, counties also have reportingresponsi- bilities. They must submit various statistical reports by the 15th of the next month. However, they expe- rience zero consequences for their failures. For ex- ample: the April 2022 CF-296 is due May 15, 2022. Table #1 shows reports that must be reported as of 6-25-22. CalSAWS Update CalSAWS New Two-Way Messaging vio- lates state and federal law- CalSAWS New Two-Way Messaging Violating the Mandatory State and Federal Requirements of State-Wide Usability (CA 239571) CalSAWS System Change Request was approved on May 26, 2022. Currently, BenefitsCal allows the welfare worker to send a message to the beneficiary, but the ben- eficiary cannot send a message to the worker. The May 26, 2022 system change allows beneficiaries to communicate with their workers when they a get a message, ONLY in those counties that opt to use this feature. Approximately 20 counties opted for this feature. This is inequitable and a violation of the state-wide administration requirements for CalFresh, CalWORKs and Medi-Cal. DV Victims Blocked from Using Ben- efitsCalby CalSAWS – It has come to our at- tention that before the transition to BenefitsCal, DV victims in Los Angeles County were able to access YBN and its various features. After the transition to BenefitsCal, DV victims are being blocked from ac- cessing its features. DV victims complained to legal services. Jen Tracy, on behalf of advocates, asked Ask Cal- SAWS We have a client who would like to use BenefitsCal to access their case information. How- ever, they were unable to link their case because of a confidentiality opt out record on their case. (cont’d on page 3) TABLE # 1 Report Name Report Topic Date last report pub- lished Missing Reports Due Consequence CA 812 CalWORKs Overpayment & Collection 1\/22 2\/22, 3\/22, 4\/22 Zero DSS 466 Welfare Fraud Reports 1\/22 2\/22, 3\/22, 4\/22 Zero DPA 482 IEVS reports 10\/21 11\/21, 12\/21, 1\/22, 2\/22, 3\/22, 4\/22 Zero CF 296 CalFresh Caseload and Emergency Assistance (CF-ES) 12\/21 1\/22, 2\/22, 3\/22, 4\/22 Zero CA237HA Homeless As- sistance 2\/22 3\/22, 4\/22 Zero TABLE #2 show a very partial list of counties who have not complied with their reporting require- ments for the CF 296 and the WtW 25 Reports. These counties just did not report – period. So what can CDSS do? Nothing. And then counites have the gall to complain about not getting complete SAR- 7s. TABLE # 2 CF 296- CalFresh Reports Alpine Nov 2021 No CF 296 Report Kings Nov 2021 No CF 296 Report Lake Nov 2021 No CF 296 Report Sierra Nov 2021 No CF 296 Report Stanislaus Nov 2021 No CF 296 Report Kings Dec 2021 No CF 296 Report San Bernardino Dec 2021 No CF 296 Report Sierra Dec 2021 No CF 296 Report Stanislaus Dec 2021 No CF 296 Report WtW 25 Reports El Dorado Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Fresno Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Humboldt Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Imperial Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Kern Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Lake Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Los Angeles Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Madera Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Marin Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Nevada Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Orange Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Riverside Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Sacramento Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed San Benito Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed San Bernardino Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed San Diego Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed San Joaquin Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed San Mateo Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Santa Clara Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Santa Cruz Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Tehama Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Ventura Jul 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Alameda Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Butte Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Contra Costa Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Del Norte Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed El Dorado Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Fresno Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Humboldt Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Imperial Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Kern Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Kings Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Lake Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Los Angeles Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Madera Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Mendocino Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Merced Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Nevada Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Orange Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Placer Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Riverside Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Sacramento Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed San Benito Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed San Bernardino Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed (Cont’d on page 3) CCWRO Welfare News June 2022 2022-05 2 3 San Diego Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed San Francisco Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed San Joaquin Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Santa Barbara Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Santa Clara Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Shasta Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Solano Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Sonoma Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Tehama Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Tulare Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Ventura Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Yolo Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Yuba Aug 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Orange Oct 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed San Bernardino Oct 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed San Diego Oct 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed San Joaquin Oct 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Merced Dec 2021 No WtW 25 Report Filed Amador Jan 2022 No WtW 25 Report Filed Butte Jan 2022 No WtW 25 Report Filed Los Angeles Jan 2022 No WtW 25 Report Filed Mendocino Jan 2022 No WtW 25 Report Filed Shasta Jan 2022 No WtW 25 Report Filed Amador Feb 2022 No WtW 25 Report Filed El Dorado Feb 2022 No WtW 25 Report Filed Fresno Feb 2022 No WtW 25 Report Filed Glenn Feb 2022 No WtW 25 Report Filed Kern Feb 2022 No WtW 25 Report Filed Mendocino Feb 2022 No WtW 25 Report Filed San Bernardino Feb 2022 No WtW 25 Report Filed Tehama Feb 2022 No WtW 25 Report Filed Ventura Feb 2022 No WtW 25 Report Filed Counties submit incomplete reports. Instead of returning the report to the county to complete, CDSS reviews the report and if it makes sense, will then post it. Counties should provide the same grace to individual beneficiaries who de- pend on their benefits to survive even more than the counties depend on federal funding. CALSAWS UPDATE (continued from page 1) What can the client do to opt in to BenefitsCal so they can access services? What does the county need to do to make BenefitsCal accessible for the client? CalSAWS Response: Thank you for your inquiry. We believe that what they are seeing is a result of a CalSAWS case pri- vacy\/confidential indicator which protects the case in some manner in both CalSAWS and BenefitsCal. The customer can contact their worker to update the privacy\/confidential indicator if they wish. It appears that CalSAWS believes that CalWORKs benefi- ciaries can easily contact their county worker and it’s done. It also seems that BenefitsCal has not been designed to protect the information of DV victims. The reality is that most counties have call centers and ben- eficiaries do not have assigned county worker in 2022. But it gets worse. A DV victim did indeed contact her county worker who had no idea that CalSAWS blocked DV victims. The county worker had no idea how to remedy the situa- tion. But wait. It gets worse. The DV victim did contact her worker who had no idea how tom help her. CalSAWS should have initially created an opt-in online fea- ture rather than forcing CalWORKs beneficiaries to contact their worker and ask for access to BenefitsCal. Given the fact that CalSAWS does not know or understand the system from the beneficiaries’ perspective, these issues will likely continue to affect DV survivors throughout the state. Violations of CalWORKs beneficiaries’ civil rights will continue as long as CalSAWS is operated by the counties and not the single state agency. CalSAWS Dashboards for Counties Only CalSAWS has built a Qlik (is this correct?) dashboard plat- form accessible only to counties. Although 91% of the funding for this Qlik dashboards are paid for with federal and State dollars , the state agencies supervising the coun- ties (CDSS, and DHCS), as well as California’s taxpayers, are prohibited from accessing this platform. (Cont’d on page 4) CCWRO Welfare News June 2022 2022-05 (cont’d from page 2) CCWRO Welfare News June 2022 2022-05 Counties have identified the types of data they want have available in their respective dash- boards. They can create ad hoc reports, state reports, etc. CalSAWS confirmed this is for internal county use only. However, the state agencies ultimately responsible for the programs cannot create ad hoc reports for it is for county internal use only. Counties have a sweet deal here in which they pay 9% of the cost for the system and get 100% exclusive access to this secret information. CalWORKs WtW Child Care Utilization With the passage of SB 80, more CalWORKs WtW participants should now receive access to childcare. SB 80 no longer requires a WtW contact for childcare anymore. For years counties failed to spend childcare allocations and have returned millions of dollars to the general fund. Although 70% of the WtW participants need childcare accord- ing to a CDSS needs assessment, counties have mastered a way of depriving CalWORKs beneficiaries of childcare to which they are entitled to receive. As evidenced by Table #3, less than 35% of WtW participants receive childcare. There are some bright spots San Luis Obispo and Tulare County have more people getting childcare compared to the number of unduplicated WtW participants. TABLE #3 – 2021-2022 Month-by-Month Utilization Month\/ Year WtW 25 -Unduplicated participants CA115 -Re- ceiving WtW child care Percentage of WtW par- ticipants getting childcare 7\/21 33365 10679 32% 8\/21 34502 11010 32% 9\/21 35143 11303 32% 10\/21 36488 11466 31% 11\/21 37751 11797 31% 12\/21 36228 11957 33% 1\/22 37793 11989 32% 2\/22 37088 12183 33% TABLE #4 shows the county-by-county Stage 1 WtW child utili- zation rates based on the CDSS WtW 25 and CW 115 reports. TABLE # 4- Feb-22 County-by-County WtW Child Care Utilization Counties WtW participants- Receiving Stage 1 Child Percentage Statewide 37088 12183 33% Alpine 0 0 0% Trinity 22 0 0% Yuba 199 0 0% Merced 328 11 3% Butte 249 11 4% Yolo 196 11 6% Shasta 163 11 7% Orange 2182 164 8% San Mateo 122 11 9% Sutter 51 5 10% Placer 99 11 11% San Diego 4388 630 14% Marin 66 11 17% Sonoma 314 55 18% Siskiyou 34 6 18% Stanislaus 363 66 18% Tuolumne 22 4 18% Imperial 674 126 19% Monterey 248 47 19% Santa Clara 1095 208 19% Humboldt 280 60 21% San Benito 48 11 23% Sacramento 2222 513 23% Los Angeles 11006 2683 24% Calaveras 52 13 25% Contra Costa 846 221 26% Lake 52 14 27% Del Norte 35 11 31% Riverside 1726 569 33% Santa Barbara 191 65 34% San Francisco 965 332 34% Alameda 1038 360 35% Madera 176 63 36% Nevada 104 38 37% San Joaquin 646 247 38% Napa 34 15 44% Santa Cruz 223 102 46% Kings 275 129 47% Solano 584 408 70% San Luis Obispo 51 64 125% Tulare 996 1655 166% (continued from page 3) 4 CCWRO Welfare News March 2022 2022-01 2019-10 News CalSAWS 2022 Teleconference: Waves of Change and A Certain Amount of Clarity On Thursday, June 23, 2022, nearly 600 people throughout California participated in CalSAWS 2022 statewide on-line conference via Zoom link. Most participants were county welfare depart- ment and state welfare agency staff. The confer- ence was clearly geared to meeting the needs of county staff, which is the group it views as its user base. CCWRO staff and a few other non-profit and CBO employees also attended. Participants were encouraged to participate in two of six break-out sessions held in the morning and afternoon follow- ing morning and afternoon plenary sessions. The breakout sessions were: — Enhancing Your Imaging Experience — Reports and Dashboards — System Process Data — Riding the Wave of Change — Post Implementation Support — Benefits Cal Enhance Public Access to Benefits These workshop and Q&A sessions with Power Point expositions were presented during morning and afternoon sessions. Each featured CalSAWS staff or partners facilitating meetings that focused on common problems and challenges that county staff and low-income community advocates had faced during the transition of counties from Cali- fornia’s four county welfare computer systems into a single statewide program and platform. CCWRO staff attended the sessions on Reports and Dashboards, Post Implementation Support, Riding the Wave of Change, and Enhancing Your Imaging Experience. The presentations were pri- marily focused on technical aspects of the system but did offer insights into how CalSAWS has faced the challenges, glitches, and mistakes of the initial transitions. CCWRO Researcher, D. Macklin, found the post-im- plementation session and its discussion of Califor- nia’s more than 10-year history of welfare services automation to be informative and intriguing. The takeaway from this session was that some people have spent their entire careers designing, redesign- ing, configuring and reconfiguring welfare benefit programs that mainly serve the needs of county welfare bureaucracies but not necessarily program applicants and beneficiaries. The Reports and Dash- boards presentation only reinforced the sense that both the conference and the system were designed to center the needs of county staff, not the populations they serve. CCWRO Senior Staff Attorney Erin Simonitch found a similar focus in the sessions she attended. There was very limited mention of the beneficiaries of the programs the system is designed to facilitate. The Riding the Wave of Change session did provide some insight on training strategies used at the county level for staff transitioning to using the new system. The Imaging Experience session briefly addressed, but downplayed, some of the challenges faced when the system was first implemented last year without a working imaging solution. It does seem that many of the imaging issues that caused delayed rollout in Los Angeles County have been resolved. However, looking forward to the next implementation waves, CalSAWS continues to take an optimistic (some might say pollyannaish ) attitude toward future challenges rather than proactively cre- ating backup plans for critical functionalities. There was a theme of contrition on the part of Cal- SAWS and is patently more obvious than usual private sector partners. Explained in detail were the specific steps that CalSAWS, an independent joint powers authority agency, is taking to bring live, in-person advanced and real-time training to individual county staff well ahead of any scheduled conversions to the CalSAWS systems and platforms. While these con- versations were helpful, the needs of actual welfare benefit program participants were barely discussed during the day-long conference. As the CalSAWS county-by-county conversion moves into its last months, it is now all the more critical for transparency between all relevant stakeholders. It’s especially crucial for program beneficiaries and their advocates to be heard, seen and have their concerns be fully considered and addressed. Without advocate feedback, CalSAWS misses the big picture of welfare recipients as a diverse and complex population of individuals whose cannot always be resolved by using the right app. Perhaps the JPA and its governmental constituencies should be forced to take a closer look, not just at automation, but at how their technology can make the lives of welfare agency clients truly dif- ferent and better. 5 CCWRO Welfare News June 2022 2022-05 ”

” CalSAWS Claims It Can’t Automate Legislative Changes Due to Prioritizing Migration. The Data Says Otherwise. For the past three years CalSAWS has asserted at legislative hearings and legislative staff briefings that due to the CalSAWS migration workload they cannot prioritize automation for legislative changes, which means social services beneficiaries face severe impacts, such as homelessness, discontinuances, terminations, and sanctions, from CalSAWS failing to apply the latest legislative remedies and improvements. The data does not support the claim by CalSAWS that migration initiatives required such a substantial amount of project hours that CalSAWS couldn’t prioritize automation of policy and legislative changes. Using data from the CalSAWS Control Board we analyzed the first quarter of 2022 hours (see below table # 2) and found that only 6.5% of the hours were for CalSAWS Migration Initia- tives. 74% of the hours were spent on so-called County Initiatives, such as upgrading the San Bernardino County Accounting System. CalSAWS responded that this data does not reflect hours spent by CalSAWS over the long run to migrate 39 C-IV counties to LRS. But as the table # 1 below shows, CalSAWS has consistently dedicated minimal hours to Migration Initiatives, with most hours dedicated to County Initiatives. TABLE # 1 Change Control Board Meeting Actions Year Total Hours Spent Hours Used For Migra- tion Initia- tives * Percent- age of Total Hours Used Hours Used For County Initiatives Percent- age of Total Hours Used Hours Used For Legislative Initiatives (premise) Percent- age of Total Hours Used 2019 328,013 46,403 14% 147,970 45% 134,422 41% 2020 710,044 77,096 11% 445,266 63% 187,682 26% 2021 872,855 83,280 9.5% 680,458 78% 109,117 13% 2022** 395,242 25,873 6.5% 291,399 74% 76,970 20% CCWRO Welfare News-2022-06 Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations, Inc. 1111 Howe Ave Suite 635 Sacramento CA 95825-8551 CCWRO is an IOLTA funded support center serving IOLTA legal services programs in California. Types of Services Offered: Litigation, Co-Counseling, Fair Hearing, Representation, Consultation, Informational Services, Research Services, In-Depth Consultation and Welfare Training. Programs Covered: CalWORKs, Welfare to Work (WtW), Food Stamps, Medi-Cal, IHSS, CAPI, Child Care, General Assistance & Refugee\/Immigrant Eligibility. All Rights Reserved. July 2022 S p e c i a l E d i t i o n Source: CalSAWS Control BoardSource: CalSAWS Control Board – * We added Migration Impact Yes numbers for the DDI and regular packets to make sure we do not miss any migra- tion hours. Legislative Initiatives are called premise which most likely include hours that are not legislation related. ** The 2022 numbers are for the first two (2) quarters of calendar year 2022 2 We did the same analysis for each year from 2019 through 2022. The tables below support our conclusion. The data does not support claims by CalSAWS that automation for legislative changes must be deprioritized in favor of migration work. As shown by the following tables, most of the project hours went toward meeting county-re- quested initiatives not related to migration. As the CalSAWS leadership publicly announced in 2019, CalSAWS is finally a computer system for the counties by the counties. The lead- ership failed to acknowledge that CalSAWS is 90% funded by the state and federal govern- ment. Currently, counties get their requests serviced first and foremost on the state’s dime while needed policy and legislative changes are left out of programming. Below is a year-by-year analysis of the hours used on CalSAWS based on the CalSAWS Change Control Board whose meetings are closed to the public. TABLE # 2 -2022 CalSAWS CCB Actions Month- Year Total Hours Hours Used For Migration Initia- tive Hours Used For County Initiatives Hours Used For Legis- lative Initiatives (prem- ise) 1\/6\/22 16341 260 15621 460 1\/20\/22 38724 1879 36085 760 2\/17\/22 39003 10124 21677 7202 3\/3\/22 20833 181 15449 5203 3\/17\/22 37171 2867 30139 4165 3\/31\/33 29474 7829 20972 673 4\/14\/22 73922 250 45373 28299 4\/28\/22 23423 0 22464 959 5\/12\/22 22104 0 20413 1691 5\/28\/22 25789 1848 12784 11157 6\/9\/22 27888 0 19074 8814 6\/23\/22 39570 635 31348 7587 2022 Annual Total to Date 2022 Total Hours Total Hours Used For Migration Initiative Total Hours Used For County Initia- tives Total Hours Used For Legislative Initiative (premise) Total 394,242 25,873 291,399 76,970 Percentage 6.5% 74% 20% CCWRO Welfare News July 2022 2022-06 3 (Cont’d on page 4) CalSAWS Change Control Board (CCB) Migration Hours Actions from 2019 to date TABLE # 3- 2019 CalSAWS CCB Actions Month- Year Total Hours Hours Used For Migration Initia- tive Hours Used For County Initia- tives Hours Used For Legislative Initiative (premise) 5\/2\/19 36177 447 5766 29974 5\/19\/19 11604 3698 4295 3811 5\/30\/19 57358 1889 14918 40541 6\/3\/19 10013 1344 6020 2649 6\/16\/19 11604 3720 5563 2321 6\/27\/2019 *** 21738 4986 0 17314 7\/11\/19 17612 3753 8200 5659 7\/25\/19 17909 5284 8553 4072 8\/22\/19 11192 2105 4207 4880 9\/5\/19 24435 1103 11021 12311 9\/19\/19 11222 646 9666 910 10\/3\/19 14242 1325 11803 1114 10\/17\/19 6351 1720 4631 0 10\/31\/19 8263 3983 2989 1311 11\/14\/19 12916 340 12576 0 11\/27\/19 17206 0 14037 3169 12\/12\/19 38171 10060 23725 4386 2019 Annual Total 2019 Total Hours Total Hours Used For Migration Ini- tiative Total Hours Used For County Initia- tives Total Hours Used For Legisla- tive Initiative (premise) Total 323,533 46,403 147,970 134,422 Percentage 14% 46% 41% ***These numbers don’t add up. The categorized Initiative Hours on 6\/27\/19 equal 22300, yet the total hours in the data set is 21738. CCWRO Welfare News July 2022 2022-06 CCWRO Welfare News July 2022 2022-06 4 TABLE # 4 -2020 CalSAWS CCB Actions Month- Year Total Hours Hours Used For Mi- gration Initiative Hours Used For County Initiatives Hours Used For Legislative Initia- tive (premise) 1\/9\/20 20582 1597 18,985 0 2\/6\/20 36424 118 3492 32814 2\/20\/20 17318 3750 5532 8036 3\/5\/20 65648 1536 53081 11031 3\/19\/20 26028 20 15706 10302 4\/2\/20 8297 40 7921 336 4\/16\/20 22969 390 15159 7420 4\/30\/20 24072 6273 1275 16524 5\/14\/20 59868 980 45402 13486 5\/28\/20 41506 2066 23659 15781 6\/11\/.20 11219 801 9475 943 6\/25\/20 55984 2285 42090 11609 7\/9\/20 53123 8807 30116 14200 7\/23\/20 44050 1706 20357 21987 8\/6\/20 23310 5368 15300 2642 9\/3\/20 43436 7724 34422 1290 10\/1\/20 19604 8325 11052 227 10\/29\/20 26430 6157 18445 1828 11\/12\/20 33248 2197 29285 1766 11\/25\/20 28660 9906 17395 1359 12\/10\/20 48268 7050 27117 14101 2020 Annual Total 2020 Total Hours Total Hours Used For Migration Ini- tiative Total Hours Used For County Initia- tives Total Hours Used For Legislative Ini- tiative (premise) Total 710044 77,096 445,266 187682 Percentage 11% 63% 26% CCWRO Welfare News March 2022 2022-01 2019-10 News 5 CCWRO Welfare News July 2022 2022-06 TABLE # 5-2021 CalSAWS CCB Actions Month- Year Total Hours Hours Used For Migration Initiative Hours Used For County Initiatives Hours Used For Legisla- tive Initiative (premise) 1\/7\/21 26481 488 23871 2122 1\/21\/21 46277 14670 21697 9910 2\/4\/21 42125 7554 32700 1871 2\/18\/21 38365 5089 23768 9508 3\/4\/21 27610 7199 17673 2738 3\/18\/21 29216 5234 23737 245 4\/1\/21 46927 1949 43195 1783 4\/15\/21 39195 6567 27355 5273 4\/29\/21 25162 1447 10790 12925 5\/13\/21 32168 7893 8787 15488 5\/27\/21 18689 2419 14002 2268 6\/1\/21 19705 2289 16351 1065 6\/24\/21 40329 4897 31401 4031 7\/8\/21 64250 2130 62120 0 7\/22\/21 27937 4983 19438 3516 8\/5\/21 28741 437 26112 2192 8\/19\/21 29247 3098 25428 721 9\/2\/21 12076 1881 7444 2751 9\/16\/21 53584 703 48760 4121 9\/30\/21 66386 348 63433 2605 10\/14\/21 22832 850 19110 2872 10\/28\/21 25482 99 20203 5180 11\/11\/21 43327 90 37017 6220 11\/24\/21 42647 966 36948 4733 12\/9\/21 24097 0 19118 4979 2021 Annual Total 2021 Total Hours Total Hours Used For Migration Initiative Total Hours Used For County Initia- tives Total Hours Used For Legislative Initiatives (premise) Total 872,855 83,280 680,458 109,117 Percentage 9.5% 78% 13% ”

“CCWRO California Public Benefits Legislative Bill & Budget Action Tracker #2022-06 July 20, 2022 [image: Shape Description automatically generated with medium confidence] The 21% CalWORKs Grants Effective October 1, 2022 Region 1 includes Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Marin, Monterey, Napa, Orange, San Diego, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma and Ventura. Region 2 All other counties * Percentage of the 2022 federal poverty level ** 65% of the CalWORKs cases has one or more parents who are not aided. Only 35% of the cases all family members are aided. That is because of excluded parents, sanctions and other anti-family features of the California CalWORKs program exclude one or more parents in 65% of the CalWORKs cases. 21% Increase CalWORKs Grants for 35% of the Caseload Persons Region #1 % of FPL * Region #2 % of FPL 1 $ 701 62% $ 663 59% 2 $ 887 58% $ 842 55% 3 $ 1,119 58% $ 1,062 55% 4 $ 1,350 58% $ 1,283 55% 5 $ 1,583 58% $ 1,504 56% 6 $ 1,814 59% $ 1,724 56% 7 $ 2,046 59% $ 1,944 56% 8 $ 2,278 59% $ 2,165 56% 21% Increase CalWORKs Grants for 65% of the Caseload ** Persons Region #1 % of FPL Region #2 % of FPL 2 $ 701 46% $ 663 43% 3 $ 887 46% $ 842 44% 4 $ 1,119 48% $ 1,062 46% 5 $ 1,350 50% $ 1,283 47% 6 $ 1,583 51% $ 1,504 49% 7 $ 1,814 52% $ 1,724 49% 8 $ 2,046 53% $ 1,944 50% 9 $ 2,278 53% $ 2,165 51% 2022 Assembly Human Services Committee Hearing Dates April 5 and & April 19, 2022 All Support letters must be submitted here Assembly Human Services Committee Debra Cooper, Chief Consultant [email protected] Jessica Langtry, Principal Consultant [email protected] Emmalynn Mathis, Consultant [email protected] Toni Zupan, Committee Secretary [email protected] Phone (916) 319-2089 Fax (916) 319-2189 1020 N St., Suite 124, Sacramento, CA 95814 , Republican Committee Consultant [email protected] Phone (916) 319-3900 Fax (916) 319-3902 1020 N St., Suite 400, Sacramento, CA 95814 All Support letters must be submitted here. Assembly Committee Member Human Services Staff Lisa Calderon, Chair (D) Phone: 916-319-2057 Room # 4120 Melissa Sagun Email: [email protected] Laurie Davis -Vice Chair (R) Phone: 916-319-2073 Room # 4720 Taylor Melody Email: [email protected]:[email protected] Joaquin Arambula (D) Phone: 916-319-2031 Room # 6240 K. Jones Email: [email protected] Isaac G. Bryan – (R) Phone: 916-319-2054 Room # 5630 Amy Ho Email: [email protected] Steven Choi – (R) Phone: 916-319-2068 Room # 4520 Brianna Yadon Email: [email protected] mailto: [email protected] Mark Stone (D) Phone: 916-319-2029 Room # 5740 Keely O’Brien Email: [email protected] Carlos Villapudua (D) Phone: 916-319-2013 Room # 6340 Jessica Rocha Email: [email protected] Christopher Ward (D) Phone: 916-319-2078 Room # 4220 Tobias Uptan-Villa Email: [email protected]:[email protected] 2022 ASSEMBLY BILLS Bill Number Author Sponsor Bill Description Next Steps AB 1649 Quirk-Silva(D) Phone: 916-319-2065 Room # 6012 Staff: Dawn Adler Email; [email protected] SUPPORT CalWORKs Child Care -This bill would require the alternative payment program to reimburse childcare providers based upon the maximum certified hours of care. Held Assembly Committee on Appropriations AB 1728 Robert Rivas (D) Phone: 916-319-2030 Room # 5510 Staff: Julio Mendez Vargas Email: [email protected] SUPPORT CCWRO WCL&P CalWORKs -This bill would exempt parents, including adoptive parents, with children under 2 years of age or younger. The parent will be notified that even though they are exempt they can volunteer to participate and will get a form to voluntarily participate in WtW. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Senate Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment AB 1803 Jones-Sawyer (D) Phone: 916-319-2059 Room # 5210 Staff: Natalia Garcia Email: [email protected] SUPPORT CCWRO Criminal Record Expengement Exempts a person who meets the criteria for a waiver of court fees and costs from being obligated to pay the filing fee for specified expungement petitions, and prohibits a court from denying expungement relief to an otherwise qualified person, and who meets the criteria, as specified, for a waiver of court fees and costs, solely on the basis that the person has not yet satisfied their restitution obligations. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Senate Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment AB 1828 – Chen (R) Phone: 916-319-2055 Room # 4620 Staff: James Malone Email: [email protected] SUPPORT CalFresh- This bill would require CDSS, before July 1, 2023, to submit a request to USDA, FNS to provide a waiver to exclude the basic allowance for housing provided to uniformed service members from countable income in the determination of eligibility and benefit level for purposes of receiving CalFresh benefits. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Senate Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment Bill Number Author Sponsor Bill Description Next Steps AB 2052 Quirk-Silva(D) Phone: 916-319-2065 Room # 6012 Staff: Dawn Adler Email; [email protected] SUPPORT CCWRO WCL&P CalWORKs- This bill would aid a CalWORKs child until they compete their high school education up to the age of 20. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Senate Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment AB 2230 Gibson (D) Phone: 916-319-2064 Room # 8110 Staff: Emmanuel Aguayo Email: [email protected] SUPPORT CCWRO WCL&P CalWORKs- This bill would eliminate the once-a-year limitation for CalWORKs Homeless Assistance and issue the 16 days of homeless assistance in one payment To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Senate Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment AB 2262- Calderon, (D) Phone: 916-319-2057 Room # 4120 SUPPORT IHSS- This bill would modify the existing IHSS annual assessment process. Held Assembly Committee on Appropriations AB 2277 – Reyes (D) Phone: 916-319-2047 Room # 8210 Staff: Ivan Fernandez Email:[email protected] SUPPORT CCWRO WCL&P CalWORKs- This bill would provide that a CalWORKs beneficiary who qualifies for a Domestic Violence Waiver must be issued a waiver by the county. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Senate Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment AB 2300 Kalra (D) Phone: 916-319-2027 Room #5130 Staff: Marissa Plante [email protected] SUPPORT CCWRO WCL&P CalWORKs- This bill would provide various exemptions from CalWORKs WtW participation. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Senate Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment AB 2393 Mayes (R) Phone: 916-319-2042 Room #4710 Staff: John Knobel [email protected] SUPPORT CCWRO CalWORKs- This bill would provide CalWORKs beneficiaries be issued incentive award or education stipend as a tax credit if established under the Revenue and Taxation Code. Dropped by Author AB 2810 Arambula (D) Phone: 916-319-2055 Room #4620 Staff: Dulce Ramirez [email protected] SUPPORT CalWORKs- This bill would require each campus of CSU to use the FAFSA information to alert students that they may be eligible for CalFresh. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Senate Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment Senate Human Services Committee Marisa Shea, Principal Consultant [email protected] Bridget Hankerson, Committee Consultant – [email protected] Elizabeth Schmitt, Committee Consultant [email protected] Mark Teemer, Committee Secretary [email protected] Phone (916) 651-1524 Fax (916) 266-9350 1020 N St. Suite 521, Sacramento, CA 95814 Joe Parra, Republican Committee Consultant [email protected] Phone (916) 651-1501 Fax (916) 445-3105 1020 N St. Suite 234, Sacramento, CA 95814 2022 Senate Human Services Committee June 20 and 27, 2022 All Support\/Oppose letters must be submitted here. Senate Member Human Services Staff Senator Melissa Hurtado, (D) Chair Phone: 651-4014 Fax: 651-4914 Room # 7310 Marisol Ibarra Email: [email protected] Senator Brian Jones, (R) Vice- Chair Phone: 651-4038 Fax: 651-4938 Room # 7140 Brixton Layne Email: @sen.ca.gov Senator Dave Cortese (D) Phone: 651-4015 Fax: 651-4915 Room # 6640 Andrea Amavisca Email: [email protected] Senator Sydney Kalmager (D) Phone: 651-4030- Fax: 651-4930 Room # 6510 Kira Pegues Email: [email protected] Senator Richard Pan (D) Phone: 651-4006 Fax: 651-4906 Room # Davon Thomas Email: [email protected] 2022 SENATE BILLS Bill Number Author Sponsor Bill Description Next Steps SB 20 – Dodd (D) Room # 6620 Phone 916-651-4003 Staff: Clara Vazeix [email protected] SUPPORT CCWRO University of California Student Association CalFresh- This bill would provide for maximizing the opportunity for students to qualify for CalFresh benefits student exemption and provide that the California Student Aid Commission will provide verification needed to qualify for CalFresh as appropriate. Assembly Appropriations Committee Consent Calendar SB 364- Skinner (D) Room # 8630 Phone 916-651-4009 Staff: Diego Lopez [email protected] SUPPORT CalFresh P-EBT Meals- The bill would require the department to seek all available funding for, and maximize participation in, the P-EBT program. The bill would also require the department to issue BOOST Nutrition EBT benefits to any child or pupil who was eligible to receive benefits under the P-EBT program, as of July 1, 2021, for the 5-month period following the end of the P-EBT program. Referred to Assembly Rules Committee SB 641 – Skinner (D) Room # 8630 Phone 916-651-4009 Staff: Kapril Walker [email protected] SUPPORT CalFresh- This bill would also ask CDSS to convene a workgroup to gather data to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of availing CalFresh to students. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Assembly Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment SB 768 Glazer (D) Room 5108 Phone 916-651-4007 Staff: Sophia Quach [email protected] SUPPORT CCWRO University of California Student Association CalFresh- This is a clean up for SB 1232. Makes some technical changes to include non-credited units, include non-profit postsecondary educational institutions and repeal SIPs for college students who are covered by SB 1232 anyhow. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Assembly Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment SB 996 – Kamlager (D) Room # 6510 Phone 916-651-4030 Staff: Kira Pegues Email: [email protected] SUPPORT CCWRO WCL&P CalWORKs- This bill would (1) eliminate CalWORKs assets test aligning it with CalFresh and (2) do away with the. CalWORKs 100-hour rule test. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Assembly Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment SB 950 -Archuleta (D) Room # 6720 Phone 916-651-4032 Staff: Andrew Aldama [email protected] SUPPORT CalFresh- This bill would require the CDSS to submit a request to USADA before December 31, 2023, to waive federal requirement in order to exclude the basic allowance for housing for members of a uniformed service from countable income in the calculation of CalFresh eligibility. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Assembly Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment SB 1066 Hurdato (D) Room 7310 Phone 916-651-4014 Staff: Marisol.Ybarra [email protected] SUPPORT California Supplemental Pay for Farmworkers Pilot Project. – This bill would require the department to administer the California Supplemental Pay for Farmworkers Pilot Project, under which certain households that include a person who worked as a farmworker for the entire period beginning March 11, 2020, and ending January 1, 2022, would receive supplemental pay of $1,000 per month for 3 years. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Assembly Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment SB 1092 Hurdato (D) Room 7310 Phone 916-651-4014 Staff: Marisol.Ybarra [email protected] SUPPORT State Hearings- This bill require that regional center fair hearing be conducted by Department of Social Services and makes a number positive changes. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Assembly Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment SB 1083 – Nancy Skinner (D) Room 8630 Phone 916-651-4009 Staff: Cassidy Denny [email protected] CCWRO SUPPORT CalWORKs Homeless Assistance – This bill would eliminate the once-a-year homeless assistance limitation and provide for 40 days temporary homeless assistance benefit. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Assembly Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment SB 1140- Umberg (D) Room 6530 Phone 916-651-4010 Staff: Yajaira Lechuga [email protected] WCL&P CCWRO SUPPORT Public Social Services EBT Card – This bill would modify the replacement of benefits skimmed from the EBT card to avoid suffering of the beneficiaries getting their assistance an EBT card. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Assembly Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment Floor. SB 1300 Durazo (D) Room 7530 Phone 916-651-4024 Staff: Bethany Renfree [email protected] SUPPORT CalFresh- This bill would revise and expand these provisions with respect to nonminor dependents, including requiring the county, if the youth elects to remain in foster care as a nonminor dependent after attaining 18 years of age, to assist the youth in establishing continuing disability as an adult, including identifying an appropriate representative payee, which may include the youth, a trusted adult, or the county. It will also require screening for SSI. To heard on DATE: 8-11-2022, Assembly Appropriations Committee Upon Adjournment Assembly Appropriations Committee 1021 O Street, Sacramento. CA 95814 Jennifer Swenson, Democratic Consultant Email: [email protected] Kala Tailor, Committee Secretary Email: [email protected] Phone 916-319-2081 fax 916-319-2181 Room # 8220 Jared Yoshiki, Republican Consultant Email: [email protected] Tel. 916-319-3900 Fax 319-3902 1020 N Street, Suite 40 Kala Tailor, Committee Secretary Committee Members Office Suite Numbers Phone Number Fax Number Chris R. Holden (Chair) 5650 916-319-2051 916-319-2151 Frank Bigelow (Vice Chair) 4640 916-319-2005 916-319-2105 Isaac G. Bryan 5630 916-319-2054 916-319-2154 Lisa Calderon 4120 916-319-2057 916-319-2157 Wendy Carrillo 5720 916-319-2051 916-319-2151 Megan Dahle 5710 916-319-2001 916-319-2101 Laurie Davies 4720 916-319-2073 916-319-2173 Vince Fong 4630 916-319-2034 916-319-2134 Jesse Gabriel 5220 916-319-2045 916-319-2145 Eduardo Garcia 8120 916-319-2056 916-319-2156 Marc Levine 5240 916-319-2010 916-319-2110 Bill Quirk 5120 916-319-2020 916-319-2120 Robert Rivas 5110 916-319-2030 916-319-2130 Akilah Weber, M.D. 4130 916-319-2079 916-319-2179 Every Wednesday 9 a. m., Room 4202 – See Committee Hearing Agenda Senate Committee on Appropriations Agnes Lee, Democratic Consultant Email: [email protected] Phone 916-651-4101 Room # 2206 Anthony Archie, Republican Consultant Email: [email protected] 916-651-1501 1020 N Street, Suite 234, Sacramento, CA 9581 1 California Public Benefits Legislative Bill & Budget Action Tracker #2022-05 Committee members Room # Phone Staff Staff Email Address Senator Anthony Portantino – (D) Chair 5050 916-651-4025 Ben Edelstein [email protected] Senator Patricia Bates – (R) (V- Chair) 3036 916-651-4036 Cynthia Bryant [email protected] Steven Bradford – (D) 2059 916-651-4035 Chase Hopkins [email protected] Brian Jones – (R) 2054 916-651-4038 Danielle Parsons [email protected] Sydney Kamlager (D) 4062 916-651-4030 Nikki Johnson [email protected] John Laird- (D) 4040 916-651-4017 Lesley Brizuela [email protected] Bob Wieckowski – (D) 4085 916-651-4010 Heather Resetarits [email protected] Every Monday 10 am, Room 4203 – See Committee Hearing Agenda Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 1 on Health m& Human Services Assembly Budget Committee Sub #1 Staff Staff Joaquin Arambula (D), Chair Phone: 916-319-2031 Fax: 916-319-2131 Room # 5155 K. Jones [email protected] Devon Mathis (R) Phone: 319-2026 Fax: 319-2126 Room. #: 2111 Aaron Rice [email protected] Jim Patterson (R) Phone: 319-2023 Fax: 319-2123 Room. #: 3132 Christine Rose mailto:[email protected]@asm.ca.gov James Ramos (D) Phone: 319-2040 Fax: 319-2140 Room. #: 4162 Adriana Ruelas [email protected] Blanca Rubio (D) Phone: 319-2048 Fax: 319-2148 Room, #: 5175 Daniel Folwarkpow [email protected] Jim Wood (D) Phone: 319-2002 Fax: 319-2102 Room, #: 6005 Tobias Uptan-Villa [email protected] Subcommittee Staff Democratic Committee Consultant Phone 319-2099 Fax 319-2199 Room 8230 Nicole Vazquez [email protected] Republican Committee Consultant Phone: 319-3900 Fax: 319-3902 Joseph Shinstock [email protected] Senate Budget & Fiscal Review Committee Sub #3 Health & Human Services Senate Budget Committee Sub #3 Staff Email Address Senator Susan Talamantes Eggman (D) Chair Phone: 651-4005 Room: #5097 David Stammerjohan [email protected] Senator Melissa Melendez (R) Phone: 651-4028 Room #4082 mailto:[email protected] Senator Richard Pan, (D) Phone: 651-4006 Room #: 5114 Bernadette Lawrence [email protected] Subcommittee Staff Committee Democratic Consultant Phone: 651-4103 Fax: 323-8386 Room #: 5097 Renita Polk, [email protected] Committee Republican Consultant Phone: 651-1501 Fax: 414-3681 1020 N , Suite 234, Sacramento, CA 95814 Rebecca Hamilton [email protected] 2022 Legislative Session Calendar Jan. 1\u2014Statutes take effect (Art. IV, Sec. 8(c)). Jan. 3\u2014Legislature reconvenes (J.R.51(a)(4)). Jan. 10\u2014Budget must be submitted by Governor (Art. IV, Sec. 12(a)). Jan. 14\u2014Last day for policy committees to hear and report to Fiscal Committees fiscal bills introduced in their house in 2021 (J.R. 61(b)(1)). Jan. 17\u2014Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Jan. 21\u2014Last day to submit bill requests to the Office of Legislative Counsel. Jan. 21\u2014Last day for any committee to hear and report to the Floor bills introduced in their house in 2021 (J.R. 61(b)(2)). Jan. 31\u2014Last day for each house to pass bills introduced in 2021 in their house (Art. IV, Sec. 10(c)), (J.R. 61(b)(3)). Feb. 18\u2014Last day for bills to be introduced (J.R. 61(b)(4)), (J.R.54(a)). Feb. 21\u2014Presidents’ Day. Apr. 1\u2014Cesar Chavez Day observed. Apr. 7\u2014Spring Recess begins upon adjournment of this day’s session (J.R. 51(b)(1)). Apr. 18\u2014Legislature reconvenes from Spring Recess (J.R. 51(b)(1)). Apr. 29\u2014Last day for policy committees to hear and report to Fiscal Committees fiscal bills introduced in their house (J.R.61(b)(5)). May 6\u2014Last day for policy committees to hear and report to the Floor non-fiscal bills introduced in their house (J.R. 61(b)(6)). May 13\u2014Last day for policy committees to meet prior to May 31 (J.R.61(b)(7)). May 20\u2014Last day for fiscal committees to hear and report to the Floor bills introduced in their house (J.R. 61(b)(8)). Last day for fiscal committees to meet prior to May 31 (J.R. 61(b)(9)). May 23 – 27\u2014Floor Session Only. No committee, other than Conference or Rules, may meet for any purpose (J.R. 61(b)(10)). Monday, June 6\u2014Floor Session, 2 p.m. Tuesday, June 7\u2014Check-in Session Wednesday, June 8\u2014Check-in Session Thursday, June 9\u2014Floor Session, 9 a.m. Monday, June 13\u2014Floor Session, 2 p.m. Tuesday, June 14\u2014Check-in Session Wednesday, June 15\u2014Check-in Session Upon Call of the President pro Tempore BUDGET BILL MUST BE PASSED BY MIDNIGHT Thursday, June 16\u2014Floor Session, 9 a.m. Monday, June 20\u2014Floor Session, 2 p.m. Tuesday, June 21\u2014Check-in Session Wednesday, June 22\u2014Check-in Session Thursday, June 23\u2014Floor Session, 9 a.m. Monday, June 27\u2014Floor Session, 2 p.m. Tuesday, June 28\u2014Check-in Session Wednesday, June 29\u2014Check-in Session Thursday, June 30\u2014Floor Session, 9 a.m. LAST DAY FOR A LEGISLATIVE MEASURE TO QUALIFY FOR THE NOVEMBER 8 GENERAL ELECTION BALLOT Friday, July 1\u2014LAST DAY FOR POLICY COMMITTEES TO MEET AND REPORT BILLS SUMMER RECESS BEGINS UPON ADJOURNMENT, PROVIDED BUDGET BILL HAS BEEN PASSED Monday, August 1\u2014Floor Session, 2 p.m. LEGISLATURE RECONVENES Monday, August 8\u2014Floor Session, 2 p.m. Tuesday, August 9\u2014Check-in Session Wednesday, August 10\u2014Check-in Session Thursday, August 11\u2014Floor Session, 9 a.m. Friday, August 12\u2014LAST DAY FOR FISCAL COMMITTEES TO MEET AND REPORT BILLS TO THE FLOOR AUGUST 15 \u2014THROUGH AUGUST 31 – FLOOR SESSION ONLY. NO COMMITTEES, OTHER THAN THE CONFERENCE OR RULES COMMITTEES, MAY MEET FOR ANY PURPOSE 13 California Public Benefits Legislative Bill & Budget Action Tracker #2022-05 CCWRO Services for IOLTA Qualified Legal Services Field Programs CCWRO – The Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations, Inc. (CCWRO) is a state- wide nonprofit organization providing support services to qualified legal service field programs (QLSPs) funded by the Legal Services Trust Fund Commission. CCWRO has been providing support services for the past 35 years. CCWRO provides consultation, information and representation for IOLTA qualified legal services programs regarding public benefit programs such as: CalWORKs, CalFresh, also known as Food Stamps or SNAP, General Assistance and General Relief, SSI, Welfare to Work and other Public Assistance Programs. CCWRO maintains current information on the status of pending or recently proposed and enacted state and federal legislation and regulations. CCWRO collects, monitors and disseminates statistical information relating to public assistance programs throughout California to legal services programs statewide. CCWRO provides public benefits training upon request depending on availability of staff. Programs Covered CalWORKs Cash Assistance to Immigrants (CAPI) Child Care Child Support CalFresh, also known as Food Stamps or SNAP General Assistance\/ General Relief In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) Medi-Cal Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA) Welfare Immigration SSI eligibility issues Welfare-to-Work (WtW) Services CCWRO provides: – Immediate response to questions from legal services programs regarding public benefit programs, laws and regulations. – Collects and disperses statistical information and analysis on the public assistance programs, including statistical information upon request from qualified legal services program. – Provides status information on pending state legislation and regulations. – Legislative Advocacy – Administrative Advocacy – Co-counsel on administrative lawsuits. – Client representation assistance at fair hearings. CCWRO Staff 1111 Howe Avenue, Suite 635 Sacramento, CA 958725-8661 Telephone 916-736-0616 Fax- 916-736-2645 Kevin Aslanian, Executive Director, Legislative Advocate Email:[email protected] Cell Phone: 916-712-0071 Grace Galligher, Directing Attorney Public Benefits Emil: [email protected] Erin Simonitch, Senior Staff Attorney Public Benefits Emil: [email protected] Andrew Chen, Staff Attorney Public Benefits Email: [email protected] Daphne Macklin, Advocate Public Benefits Email: [email protected] ”

” Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations, Inc. 1111 Howe Ave Suite 635 Sacramento CA 95825-8551 Telephone (916) 736-0616 Fax (916) 736-2645 CCWRO is an IOLTA funded support center serving IOLTA legal services programs in California. Types of Services Offered: Litigation, Co-Counseling, Fair Hearing, Representation, Consultation, Informational Services, Research Services, In-Depth Consultation and Welfare Training. Programs Covered: CalWORKs, Welfare to Work (WtW), Food Stamps, Medi-Cal, IHSS, CAPI, Child Care, General Assistance & Refugee\/Immigrant Eligibility. All Rights Reserved. July 2022 IN BRIEF Tennessee Issues Back to School $450 Ben- efits to TANF Families- Tennessee TANF fami- lies with active cases since May 31, 2022, were eligible to receive a one-time payment of $450 to help with back-to-school expenses for the 2022- 2023 academic school year. Over 13,000 cases of Families First, Tennessee’s TANF’s program, were expected to receive the payment on July 1. California needs to do the same for the Cal- WORKs-TANF families here. Defective Notices Still Being Issued by Cali- fornia’s Computer Systems (CalSAWS) – Mr. 1BB431 received a Notice of Action, dated June 27, 2022, stating that his family’s CalFresh bene- fits will stop effective May 13, 2022. After spend- ing billions of taxpayer dollars, CalSAWS cannot produce a basic due process Notice of Action, which requires ten-day advance notice for re- duced benefits. That is a fatal flaw in California’s county operated deficient computer system. Counties Force Ineligible Immigrants to Ap- ply for Medicare Benefits – California counties, knowing full well that immigrants are not eligible for Medicare, still force them to provide verifica- tion of application for Medicare as part of the Medi-Cal application process. Immigrants just arriving in the US are not eligible for Medicare, but the counties still require California immi- grants to apply. After applying, some counties then deny Medi- Cal applications to immigrants who have been in the USA for less than five (5) years. This is a violation of ACWDL 19-13 that states: In accordance with Title 22, CCR, Sections 50763(a)(1) and 50777, Medi-Cal applicants and beneficiaries must, as a condition of eli- gibility, apply for any other available health coverage, including Medicare, if they quali- fy for it and when no cost is involved. Coun- ties shall inform applicants and benefi- ciaries of their requirement to apply for Medicare if they are either citizens of the United States or are aliens legally present in the United States for at least five years (Our emphasis added) Counties, unlawfully force immigrants to apply for benefits to which they are clearly ineligible for. CalSAWS Update BenefitsCal fails to provide verification of Cal- WORKs, CalFresh and Medi-Cal eligibility that providers, such as community college servic- es, immigration, and housing services need so they can provide services. It populates old information and for Medi-Cal- only cases don’t get any verification at all. This could have been avoided if counties and Cal- SAWS didn’t operate in secrecy intentionally excluding representatives of beneficiaries from the process. The BenefitsCal Quick Guides Not Acces- sible to Beneficiaries – The BenefitsCal Quick Guides (written instructions) are not available on the BenefitsCal website, making it difficult for new users to figure out how to navigate the system. The Quick Guides on the CalSAWS website are placed in the news section rather than Resources or some other intuitive location. Learning Tools connects to Pro- gram information (which basically reiterates Program Descriptions ), but not the Quick Guides or videos. The Quick Guides are avail- able in English only. This is a violation of civil rights of CalWORKs\/CalFresh\/Medi-Cal benefi- ciaries whose primary language is not English. This could have been avoided if counties and CalSAWS didn’t operate in secrecy intention- ally excluding representatives of beneficiaries from the process CCWRO Welfare News-2022-07 (Cont’d on page 3) 2 CCWRO Welfare News July 2022 2022-07 Make an Error in BenefitsCal, Start All Over Again – When beneficiaries applying for aid or trying to complete a SAR 7 or an annual redeter- mination get an error message code, BenefitsCal doesn’t allow the beneficiary to choose an alter- native. They get stuck and have to start over (or leave the website entirely). BenefitsCal Users Are Prevented from Report- ing Problems Fully – BenefitsCal users can’t upload a photo\/screen shot when reporting tech- nical issues at the AskCalSAWS website. This makes it onerous to communicate and describe error messages. The difficulty of reporting tech- nical issues directly through BenefitsCal and the failure of the system to invite feedback means that CalSAWS does not have access to important information about where and how problems are occurring. BenefitsCal Violates Civil Rights of Ben- efitsCal Users Who Do Not Read English or Spanish – The email messages sent to LADPSS customers regarding the end of YBN and the need to create a BenefitsCal account were only in English and Spanish, and the link to transla- tions was written only in English. Will LADPSS mail translate notices regarding the transition to BenefitsCal so that beneficiaries can under- stand? How will non-English speakers be able access messages in their language? COUNTY WELFARE DEPARTMENT VICTIM OF THE MONTH Ms. SH#104819612 applied for CalWORKs in March and May. Both times, she met the requirements for Immediate Need and both times the county unlawfully refused to issue the benefits to which she was entitled. The small county requested multiple types of verification, including documents unneces- sary, and prohibited from being requested, to determine eligibility. Here are the CalWORKs verification rules: 40-126.3 says the county can only ask for what is necessary to determine eligibility. 40-126.3 Require Only Evidence of Eligibility. The county shall require only evidence necessary to deter- mine past or present eligibility for the amount or delivery of aid. 40-101.12 Prohibits the county from asking for unnecessary information. 40-101.12 It is the responsibility on all who are concerned with the administration of aid to do so with courtesy, consideration, and re- spect toward applicants and recipi- ents and without attempting to elicit any unnecessary information. 40-115.22 limits verification re- quests to items needed to verify linking or nonlinking factors of eligibility. 40-115.22 Acceptable evidence must be obtained concerning the linking and nonlinking factors of eli- gibility. (See each Eligibility Chapter for what is acceptable evidence.) When such evidence does not ex- ist, the applicant’s sworn statement under penalty of perjury. 40-107 (c) (1) Linking Eligibility Fac- tors — Definition Linking eligibility factors are those single conditions that link an appli- cant to a categorical aid program. These factors are: blindness and deprivation of parental care or sup- port. 40-107 (c) (2) Nonlinking Eligibility Factors Definition Nonlinking eligibility factors are those factors that establish whether an applicant is entitled to assistance under the program to which he is linked. Although the categorical aid programs have these nonlink- ing eligibility factors in common, the standards differ. The nonlinking eligibility factors are: age, property, residence, financial status and insti- 3 tutional status. CDSS and County Welfare Agencies have presented data showing the CalWORKs caseload going down in recent months. Why would CalWORKs caseloads be dropping in a time when more Californians than ever need these benefits? It is simple. Counties often try all kinds of legal and illegal methods to deter needy residents from applying and receiving CalWORKs. Ms. SH#104819612 is a classic case of the county complicating the application process. Ms. SH#104819612’s home includes her hus- band and two children who applied for case aid on 3-7-22. A telephone interview was conducted on 3-8-22. Ms. SH#104819612 reported zero income and zero assets. They have a mortgage payment under $2,000. The county determined that they needed more verification. On 3\/9\/22 the county mailed a CW 2200 demanding copies of the following documents: Marriage\/Divorce certificate This is a 2-par- ent family. Verification of marriage or divorce is not a condition of eligibility. The county testified at a state hearing under oath that they need the marriage certificate to make sure that paternity was established for all children. The county, having the burden of proof, refused to show any evidence that paternity was an issue for the children. Proof of residence – Rent receipt – Mort- gage payment – Verification of residence for 2-22 The beneficiary was getting CalFresh in March and the CalFresh calculation in- cluded housing costs. The county admitted that proof of residency had been previously submitted, thus it is illegal for the county to ask for verification that has been previously submitted. The County also impermissibly requested all bank statements (include all pages) showing balances, complete account numbers, and transaction history for the month of 02\/2022 + 3\/1\/-3\/7. The county cannot ask for verifi- cation of an item that does not impact eligi- bility. Under current law, if the liquid resources ex- ceed $10,211, then the applicant is ineligible. The County had no evidence that there was more than $10,211. In fact, the County did have a statement under penalty of perjury that the victim herein had less than $100 on the SAWS 1 and\/or SAWS 2. Moreover, the SAWS 2 showed no assets. School verification for the 17 year old daughter -0 failure to provide verification of school attendance should not result in denial of CalWORKs A child between the age of 17-18 should be referred to WtW if the child is not attending school. Proof of closed bank accounts The county has no evidence that the bank accounts are open and has assets in excess of $10,211. In fact, the victim has submitted a statement under penalty of perjury that she has no assets on the SAWS 1 and\/or SAWS2. This is a violation 40-101.12 that states: It is the responsibility on all who are con- cerned with the administration of aid to do so with courtesy, consideration, and respect toward applicants and recipients and without attempting to elicit any unnecessary informa- tion. The county also requested proof for nonexistent assets, including any life insurance policies, proof of vehicle sales, absent parent, shared custody\/ visitation agreement (intact family) and income tax information. This is not an aberration. This is typical county behavior – how to make families ineligible for Cal- WORKs seems to the purpose of the program in many counties. CCWRO Welfare News July 2022 2022-07 CCWRO Welfare News July 2022 2022-06 For CalFresh Annual Redeterminations Lack of Statewide Rules and Inconsistent County Procedures Results in Food Insecurity The California CalFresh annual re- determination process remains te- dious and time-consuming which results in many individuals and families enduring hunger insecu- rity. Today, we have telephone signa- tures and telephone interviews. Yet counties continue to mail pack- ets of paper to be completed and returned. If the household com- pletes the telephone interview, but the county does not get the paper back, the redetermination is de- nied in many cases. The lack of consistent statewide rules for annual redeterminations results in small and medium coun- ties not granting CalFresh benefits to those who qualify, forcing food insecure families to reapply for benefits. Table # 1 reveals while statewide 94% of the CalFresh cases are able to complete their annual rede- terminations, in a number of small and medium counties very few are able to navigate the California maximum county option rede- termination system. It should be noted that while CalSAWS wants to automate every piece of legisla- tion even when it is not necessary, CalFresh annual redetermination process is not currently automat- ed, thus, the degree of variance from large counties to small and medium counties. TABLE # 1 Percentage of CalFresh Successful Redeterminations Source: CF 296 CDSS reports based on county provided data Statewide CalFresh Redeterminations Completed CalFresh Cases Determined Eligible after Redetermination % of CalFresh Cases Determined Eligible after Redetermination Statewide 85327 80346 94% Butte 708 1 0% Merced 1096 11 1% Monterey 947 11 1% Madera 652 11 2% Humboldt 627 11 2% Imperial 580 11 2% Shasta 454 11 2% Yuba 351 11 3% Marin 337 11 3% Mendocino 291 11 4% Placer 285 11 4% Sutter 256 11 4% Siskiyou 164 11 7% Del Norte 139 11 8% San Benito 126 11 9% Tehama 120 11 9% Calaveras 119 11 9% Tuolumne 110 11 10% Glenn 75 11 15% Amador 59 11 19% 4 ”

” Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations, Inc. 1111 Howe Ave Suite 635 Sacramento CA 95825-8551 Telephone (916) 736-0616 Fax (916) 736-2645 CCWRO is an IOLTA funded support center serving IOLTA legal services programs in California. Types of Services Offered: Litigation, Co-Counseling, Fair Hearing, Representation, Consultation, Informational Services, Research Services, In-Depth Consultation and Welfare Training. Programs Covered: CalWORKs, Welfare to Work (WtW), Food Stamps, Medi-Cal, IHSS, CAPI, Child Care, General Assistance & Refugee\/Immigrant Eligibility. All Rights Reserved. (Cont’d on page 3) August 2022 CCWRO Welfare News-2022-08 A SMARTER WAY THAN THE SB 1138 NEWSOM CARE COURT Reprinted from Capitol Weekly 9\/30\/22 – Debates about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s CARE Courts program have raged across the state in recent months. A major point of contention is whether Californians with mental health challenges will be helped or hurt by being pushed into the legal system. In Portland, Oregon, there is a different approach that has proven successful for many years. Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs) (Mobile Crisis Servic- es) work with local crisis centers to provide people in mental health crisis the care they need instead of incar- ceration . Community Mental Health Programs in collaboration with local law enforcement agencies have established CIT programs across the state to de-escalate crisis situations involving individuals with serious men- tal illness. CITs Mobile Services respond to a mental health crisis in the community, with police normally already at the scene. The Mobile Services deescalates the situation without using force to get the person in crisis to agree to go to a crisis center and avoid being booked by the police. For three years, I worked at the Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare Urgent Walk-in Clinic, the primary emer- gency mental health clinic in Portland where the PPD and CIT teams brought those suffering from acute mental health emergencies. I saw the benefits and chal- lenges of this program firsthand. CalSAWS Update Under federal and state law the California single state agencies administering public social services program and medical assistance program – CDSS and DHCS – are the principals and counties are simply their agents (See Ross v. Woods, https:\/\/ caselaw.findlaw.com\/ca-supreme-court\/1834944. html) That may be the law, but caseload information embodied in CalSAWS is available to the single state agencies of Califronia public socail sevces programs. In the world of CalSAWS, the counties are the principle and the California state legis- lature, the single state agencies for SNAP (Cal- Fresh), TANF (CalWORKs), Medicaid (Medi- Cal) are the agents of counties. An innocent reader may assume that counties must have some skin in the game. Not so. The 2022-2023 budget total spending for CalSAWS is $109.1 million and the county skin in the game is a meager $3.5 million or 3% of the total allo- cation. When CDSS builds a budget or analyzes proposed legislation, the agency is locked out of looking at data in CalSAWS to see caseload trends and other caseload information. The California single state agencies must request as well as pay for information from CalSAWS. The SAWS internal Request for Research and Analysis is known as a SIRFRA the SAWS Cost Estimation Request for Research and Analysis is known a SCERFRA are the intruments that DHCS and CDSS has to use to get (Cont’d on page 2) 2 CCWRO Welfare News August 2022 2022-078 (Care Court, cont’d,) At the front desk, I would be the first face the patient saw in the clinic, would do their intake, and manage their time in the lobby. Generally, the patient was relieved to be out of the police or crisis vehicle and in a lobby or treatment room with car- ing professionals; this alone provided relief to most people brought in. With few exceptions, we helped individuals who were not engaging in criminal be- havior or putting others at risk. In most police interactions with folks in a mental health crisis, self-harm was the primary concern. Police are especially ill suited to deal with self-harm situations because they are trained to detect and disarm threats. Many non-threatening actions are perceived by police as threats. In contrast, mental health professionals, adminis- trative and clinical, are trained to defuse or evade threats with tactics such as being empathetic and non-judgmental, keeping tone and body language neutral and respecting personal space, and making the clinic a safe place for those suffering a mental health crisis. CITs assure that most folks being dropped off in a mental health emergency don’t end immediately up in jail or in court because of their medical condi- tion. CITs aren’t a panacea. The people helped often came back later in another crisis because their living circumstances hadn’t changed and homelessness is a permanent crisis if you’re homeless. But it is an effective and humane strategy for deal- ing with mental health crisis. CARE Courts force people into a treatment pro- gram and apply penalties for non-compliance , the consequences for being found non-compliant with a CARE plan or not attending court hearings are serious: a possible referral to Lanterman- Petris- Short Act (conservatorship) proceedings with a pre- sumption that there is no suitable community-based alternative for the person. This creates a direct route to conservatorship a legal determination that deprives a person of the right to choose where to reside, to make medical decisions, to vote, to decide social and sexual contacts and relationships, and other funda- mental rights. This is a strategy for assuring people comply with mental health treatment programs, but in my opinion, it is needlessly punitive and not based on proven effective treatment strategies. At Cascadia BHC I saw how patients getting self-directed and compassion-based treatment achieved better outcomes than those mandated by local or state law to attend treatment. Staying clean, staying on meds, coming to regular groups, one-on-one appointments, and building a community around the patient all are essential for effective treatment. Making it clear to the patient that treatment is for them and based on their needs, as opposed to mandated treatment, seemed to make the patients more comfortable and at ease with their treatment. Particularly, this community and compassion approach makes relapses or mental health cri- sis’s much easier to process and recover from. A relapsed patient is in a delicate and liminal state. Providing a welcoming empathetic place and community to work on their recovery is invaluable. From my experience in the field, it’s clear that Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs) (Mobile Crisis Services) and Behavioral Health Crisis Professionals can offer a more humane strat- egy for dealing with mental health crises than CARE Courts can. The CARE Courts will throw Californians already suffering from several life crises into an unfriendly and intimidating system, when what people in crisis need is compassion and help. Editor’s Note: David K. Aslanian is an ad- vocate at the Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations. 3 (CalSAWS, cont’d.) CCWRO Welfare News August 2022 2022-08 information from CalSAWS. As we said above, the reason that the California single state agency has to ask CalSAWS for information because in the 21st century there is no interface between CDSS, DHCS and CalSAWS. CalSAWS is 100% controlled by counties. Table #1 shows the monthly charges for research and data analysis that CalSAWS collected from their principle, CDSS, in twelve months. TABLE # 1 – CDSS SIRFRA\/ SCERFRA\/ External Inquiries – Source: CalSAWS Service Month Payment Month Total Hours CalSAWS Hourly rate CalSAWS Monthly Billing to CDSS 21-Sep 21-Nov 85 158.27 $ 13,452.95 21-Oct 21-Dec 192 158.27 $ 30,387.84 21-Nov 22-Jan 151 158.27 $ 23,898.77 21-Dec 22-Feb 45 158.27 $ 7,122.15 22-Jan 22-Mar 236 158.27 $ 37,351.72 22-Feb 22-Apr 167 158.27 $ 26,431.09 22-Mar 22-May 310 158.27 $ 49,063.70 22-Apr 22-Jun 198 158.27 $ 31,337.46 22-May 22-Jun 55 158.27 $ 8,704.85 22-May 22-Jun 33 158.27 $ 5,222.91 22-May 22-Jul 127 158.27 $ 20,100.29 22-Jun 22-Aug 171 158.27 $ 27,064.17 TOTAL $ 280,137.90 Over a 12-month period, CDSS spent nearly $300,000 to access its own data. To reduce this un- necessary state spending, there should be a simple interface between the county-controlled wel- fare system and the state agencies responsible for funding and overseeing the system, CDSS and DHCS. We shouldn’t have another year where the State of California is forced to pay the counties for data created on the CalSAWs system, which is 97% funded with federal and state funds. The State of California, and through them it’s beneficiaries and taxpayers, should get what they’re pay- ing for. ”